George Sternberg excavates his most famous discovery, the fish-within-a-fish, in Gove County near Castle Rock badlands. Digitized By Forsyth Digital Collections/University Archives, Fort Hays State University
High Plains Public Radio (HPPR) has a story about Kansas during the Cretaceous Period. Eight million years ago, a good part of Kansas was covered by the Western Interior Seaway - a "shallow" sea. That sea teamed with life, including large mosasaurs, fish like Xyphactinus, sharks, and even giant clams. Circling above were pterosaurs like Pteronodon. One very famous fossil from western Kansas is called the "fish within a fish", which resides in the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas. The fossil features a large Xyphactinus fish with a smaller fish fossilized in its stomach.
That’s when he dug up a 14-foot-long fish with a perfectly intact eight-foot-long fish in its belly, meaning it swallowed the colossal prey whole right before it died. Their intertwined skeletons are so large that they wouldn’t fit in Sternberg’s truck and had to be sawed in half.
The specimen is now known far and wide as the fish-within-a-fish. Images of the famous fossil adorn billboards, t-shirts, even the can of a new beer from the local brewery.
And today, this wall-length double-fish spectacle greets visitors as they step into the Sternberg Museum.
“This is the most photographed fossil in our collection by a longshot,” collections manager Aly Baumgartner said. “Everybody takes their picture with this.”
