Fifty Million Year Old Fossil Perfectly Illustrates The Ancient Food Chain

Who does not enjoy searching for interesting fossils in a fossil bed? Fossils are undeniably fun, and it is amazing to catch a glimpse of ancient scenes involving various animals caught for an eternity in petrified wood. The Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt recovered a fossil that perfectly demonstrates the food chain fifty million years ago.

During a 2009 expedition into the famously well-preserved fossil bed at Grube Messel in Darmstadt researchers recovered a fossil that showed a snake, a lizard and a beetle. However, what makes this fossil so interesting is that it is only the second fossil ever found to contain a direct presentation of the animal food chain. In other words, the lizard was found inside of the snake and the beetle was found inside of the lizard. This particular fossil bed located in south-central Germany is notorious for its ancient creatures being well preserved inside petrified wood. The first fossil that showed evidence of prehistoric food chains involved a horse that was so well preserved that even the grapes that the ancient horse had fed on were still visible within the fossil. However, the more recent “food-chain fossil” is no doubt much cooler.

Have you heard of any other interesting insect  fossils that show how they lived and perhaps an amusing situation they were caught in?