Hays, Kansas

At the Sternberg Museum of Natural History on the Fort Hays State University campus in Hays sits one of paleontology's most famous fossils: the 'Fish-Within-a-Fish.' It is a roughly 13-foot Xiphactinus, a monstrous bony predator of the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, with a complete six-foot Gillicus arcuatus preserved inside its rib cage, the meal that likely killed it. Paleontologist George F. Sternberg uncovered it in Gove County, Kansas, in 1952. Scientists think the smaller fish thrashed as it was swallowed and ruptured something vital, so the predator died moments after its last bite, then sank and fossilized whole, prey and all. Some 80-plus million years ago this dry prairie lay under a warm inland sea. The specimen is the museum's signature exhibit.