48-Million-Year-Old Fossil: Insect Inside Lizard Inside Snake Reveals Prehistoric Battle of Food Chain

48-Million-Year-Old Fossil: Insect Inside Lizard Inside Snake Reveals Prehistoric Battle of Food Chain

Palaeontologists have uncovered a fossil that has preserved an insect inside a lizard inside a snake – a prehistoric battle of the food chain that ended in a volcanic lake some 48 million years ago.

Pulled from an abandoned quarry in southwest Germany called the Messel Pit, the fossil is only the second of its kind ever found, with the remains of three animals sitting snug in one another.

“It’s probably the kind of fossil that I will go the rest of my professional life without ever encountering again, such is the rarity of these things,” palaeontologist Krister Smith from Germany’s Senckenberg Insтιтute told Michael Greshko at National Geographic. “It was pure astonishment.”

Smith and his team suspect that the iguana ate a shiny insect meal, and then two days later was swallowed headfirst by a juvenile snake.

It’s unclear how the snake ultimatey died, but what we do know is it got too close to the deep volcanic lake that once bubbled in the Messel Pit, and was either poisoned or suffocated by the toxic fumes.

Its corpse likely slid into the lake after death, where the Russian doll of skeletons was preserved perfectly for millions of years.

“To see this kind of trophic scale recorded within the gut of a snake is a very cool thing,” UK palaeontologist Jason Head from the University of Cambridge, who wasn’t involved with the study, told National Geographic.

While the combination of snake-lizard-bug is entirely unique in the fossil record, this isn’t the first time a prehistoric turducken has been discovered.

Back in 2008, Austrian researchers found a 250-million-year-old fossil that had preserved a shark that had eaten some kind of amphibian that had eaten a small fish.

It’s far more fragmentary than the Messel Pit fossil, but it was the first real indication that the food web of the time was far more complex than researchers had thought.

If anywhere is likely to be harbouring more of these types of fossils, it’s the Messel Pit, which in the past has served up the now notorious Darwinius masillae fossil, a fossilised beetle with its turquoise iridescence largely intact, and two turtles caught in the middle of doing, erm, turtle things…

The best-preserved fossils in the world from the Eocene epoch, which ran from around 56 to 34 million years ago, have been found here, and Smith and his team are already planning another trip back.

“This fossil is amazing,” says one of the researchers, Agustín Scanferla. “We were lucky men to study this kind of specimen.”

Related Posts

10,000-Year-Old Sandals from Fort Rock Cave: The Oldest Footwear Ever Discovered

10,000-Year-Old Sandals from Fort Rock Cave: The Oldest Footwear Ever Discovered

One of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries in North America is a pair of ancient sandals, dating back 10,000 years (8000 BC), found in Fort Rock Cave, Oregon. These sandals,…

The archaeological discovery of a mysterious tomb with the jellyfish necklace

In eastern Serbia, at the archaeological site of Viminacium Vi še Grobalja, an extraordinary discovery comes to light, bringing with it the traces of an ancient and…

Iron Age Danube Model

Am 15. Februar durfte ich für die Koryphäe der Textilarchäologie, Karina Grömer, modeln. Natürlich habe ich diese Gelegenheit auch gleich genutzt für einige Fragen zu diesem Thema….

In September, the Nymph statue, which was found during the Gymnasium excavations carried out in the Amasra district of Bartı and dated to the 2nd century AD, started to be exhibited in the Amasra Museum.

In September, the Nymph statue, which was found during the Gymnasium excavations carried out in the Amasra district of Bartı and dated to the 2nd century AD,…

What to do in oxfordshire: Uffington White Horse and White Horse Hill

Now living in Oxfordshire we’re keen to discover all the county has to offer, first up was a trip to the Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric hill…

Cholula

The entrance to the Great Pyramid is via a tunnel on the north side.  Excavators from the Proyecto Cholula used mining techniques to dig tunnels into the…