The First Fossil Puke: What It Reveals About Permian Predators

Fossilised vomit can provide direct, yet disgusting, evidence of past ecosystems and interactions between long extinct organisms. This week we take a look at "the earliest terrestrial regurgitalite" from the early Permian of Germany. This prehistoric puke helps us to reconstruct who was eating what, including the Dimetrodon, the famous sail-backed synapsid. 

This week's paper is "Early Permian terrestrial apex predator regurgitalite indicates opportunistic feeding behaviour" by Arnaud Rebillard and colleagues, published in Scientific Reports in February 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02929-8

Another 'paper' we mention is "Unusual Arrangement of Bones at Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada" by Mark McMenamin published in 21st Century Science & Technology in 2012 (no doi). Another that we mention but couldn't remember the title of was "Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory" by Arjun Mann and colleagues https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02929-8

Wide screen art by Sophie Fernandez.