A broken tooth lodged deep in bone can outlast the animal that lost it. In two whale skulls from Belgium, those fragments have done exactly that, preserving a moment of violence from roughly five million years ago. The skulls, both from the Early Pliocene, carry more than scratches. Embedded within them are pieces of shark teeth, snapped off during feeding. That detail matters. Bite marks alone can be ambiguous, but a tooth fragment ties predator and prey together with unusual clarity. Dr. Olivier Lambert of the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels led the analysis using CT scans, which revealed the hidden fragments without damaging the fossils. “Our knowledge of past marine mammal assemblages in the North Sea remains rather fragmentary, so any new fossil may prove informative,” he said. “In this case, the studied skulls revealed some unexpected and fascinating clues about the way these whales’ life ended.” Location of the Port of Antwerp area on a map of northern Belgium. Grey shading indicates occurrence of marine Pliocene deposits. (CREDIT: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica) A …