'Accidental discovery' reveals 'cannibal creature' from the dinosaur era

RESEARCHERS have found evidence that young fish from the dinosaur era sometimes cannibalized their younger relatives.

The team discovered the strange, prehistoric behavior by analyzing a well-preserved set of fossils

The fossils belonged to an extinct group of ray-finned fishes known as the Pachycormiformes, which lived during the Jurassic period.

“This species arose from an accidental discovery,” Samuel Cooper of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany told New Scientist.

“They became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, along with the dinosaurs,” says Cooper.

While looking at the fossils, Cooper and researchers discovered that several fish had “undigested, young Pachycormus” in their intestines.

This could be due to one of two possibilities: cannibalism or giving birth to live young.

If the latter is the case, the internal fossilized fish may be fetuses rather than prey.

However, Cooper believes cannibalism is the likely explanation, as some specimens had the remains of unrelated fish in their intestines.

Furthermore, all three specimens are juveniles in all cases, indicating that they may have been common prey.

“The great thing about intestinal contents is that a lot of the ambiguity is gone,” says Stephanie Drumheller of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

“It's absolutely cannibalism,” Drumheller added.

The specimens of P. macropterus all come from a quarry near Curcy in France.

However, because the site no longer exists, scientists cannot visit it again after re-excavation.

Cooper noted that the location where the specimens are found is important because it provides insight into whether cannibalism was normal behavior.

“We have a lot of specimens. This is a very abundant fossil fish from the Jurassic,” he says.

This implies that cannibalism may not have been their normal behavior, but instead could mean that conditions were hostile.

“When we see cannibalism at such high levels in a fish population, it's usually because the environment is under stress,” he said.