{"id":36678,"date":"2026-09-11T08:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=36678"},"modified":"2026-09-10T16:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T20:47:14","slug":"a-queensland-fossil-preserved-an-ichthyosaurs-last-meal-but-the-hunter-soon-became-food-for-something-even-larger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/a-queensland-fossil-preserved-an-ichthyosaurs-last-meal-but-the-hunter-soon-became-food-for-something-even-larger\/36678\/","title":{"rendered":"A Queensland fossil preserved an ichthyosaur\u2019s last meal, but the hunter soon became food for something even larger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Queensland<\/a>, Australia,<\/a> an ichthyosaur fossil nicknamed BOB (Platypterygius australis<\/a>) revealed a food chain of three levels in the ancient Eromanga sea. High technology scans showed that its stomach had the remains of a flying pterosaur<\/a>, but the bite marks in its own skeleton show that it also was also attacked by a much bigger marine reptile, probably a Kronosaurus. The findings show how modern technology and fossil research can reconstruct the ecological interactions of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A three-level food chain frozen in stone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With the first scans, fish and squid-like belemnites, shell fragments, and pieces of a pterosaur appeared all together, which made researchers interpret as the fossilized gut contents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: Salmon and trout still carry the marks of an event that doubled their entire DNA 100 million years ago, and scientists found the duplicated genes behave most alike at one moment in the embryo<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This was considered great evidence because having the prey inside<\/a> the body is much more reliable than finding the rest of the bones nearby. So here, the sequence starts with a flying reptile that ends up inside a large marine hunter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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