Scientists have identified a remarkable underwater battle, recorded millions of years ago, using fossil fragments.
An unfortunate manatee – a mammal that looks a bit like a seal – was torn to pieces by a crocodile in the waters off present-day Venezuela, they say.
When the crocodile was finished with the body, the poor animal’s remains were eaten by a tiger shark.
The bloody episode from 11.6 million years ago is detailed in a study by paleontologists who interpreted telltale bite marks on the manatee’s skeleton.
An impressive artist’s impression shows the manatee spitting out blood as it dies, with the shark in the background.
In this artist’s depiction, the manatee (above) is pinned underwater by a crocodile, about 11.6 million years ago. Today’s crocodiles look very similar to those of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago.
Pictured, tooth impact across the manatee’s snout. The viscous attack began when the crocodile first attempted to grab its prey by the snout in an attempt to strangle it
“These findings represent one of the few papers documenting multiple predators attacking a single prey,” said the team, led by experts from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
‘Evidence of trophic [feeding] Interactions are not scarce in the fossil record, but they are usually represented by fragmentary fossils that display features of ambiguous significance.’
The skeleton of a manatee, consisting of a partial skull and 18 vertebrae, was found in the Agua Clara Formation in northwestern Venezuela.
According to the scientists, it was the dugongine sea cow, belonging to the extinct genus Culebratherium, which lived during the Early to Middle Miocene (23 to 11.6 million years ago).
The plump manatee could not fully submerge herself in water, but floated on the surface, eating kelp and making grunting sounds.
This made them particularly vulnerable to hunting by dangerous species lurking in the depths of the water.
The skeleton of the manatee, consisting of a partial skull and 18 vertebrae, was found in what is now northwestern Venezuela
Pictured, a shark bite. The findings mark one of the few examples of a creature being preyed upon by multiple animals
The team’s discovery was made in outcrops of the Early to Middle Miocene Agua Clara Formation, south of the city of Coro, Venezuela.
According to the researchers, the deep teeth marks on the snout of this manatee indicate that the crocodile first tried to grab its prey by the snout in an attempt to strangle it.
Two other large incisions indicate that the crocodile then dragged the manatee away, tearing the manatee’s flesh and staining the water a deep red with blood.
The wily crocodile likely then performed a ‘death roll’ while grabbing its prey – a behaviour commonly seen in modern crocodiles.
A tiger shark tooth was found in the manatee’s neck and shark bites were found on the skeleton, indicating that the remains of the animal were subsequently dismembered by scavengers.
“Because the shark bite marks are so irregularly distributed, they are interpreted as scavenging,” the authors said.
A Dugong – a modern-day relative of the extinct sea cow in question – is pictured here grazing on seagrass in shallow waters near Marsa Alam, Egypt, Red Sea
The team said the findings provide one of the only examples of an animal being attacked by two different predators during the Early to Middle Miocene.
They also add to the evidence suggesting that the food chain behaved in a similar way millions of years ago as it does today.
“When we observe a predator in the wild today, we often find the carcass of prey, which shows that it also serves as a food source for other animals,” said lead researcher Aldo Benites-Palomino from the University of Zurich.
But fossil data on this are rarer [so] We were unsure which animals would serve this purpose as a food source for multiple predators.
‘Our previous research has shown that sperm whales are eaten by a variety of shark species. This new research highlights the importance of manatees in the food chain.’
The new study is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.