Sternberg Museum of Natural History
A fossil museum that overturns the “flat prairie” cliché by placing western Kansas beneath a Cretaceous ocean.
Artwork inspired by C. A. Seward
Sternberg Museum of Natural History is built around the geology and life of the Great Plains, especially the marine fossils preserved in Kansas chalk. The iconic Fish-within-a-Fish specimen—a large Xiphactinus with its last meal intact—turns predator behavior into direct evidence rather than reconstruction. Mosasaurs, pterosaurs, and regional paleontology broaden that vanished seaway.
Start with deep time and follow the changing environments forward before entering living collections and regional ecology. Children may race toward dramatic skeletons, but the smaller specimens explain how scientists infer food webs, climate, and preservation. Temporary exhibits and live-animal areas make a final loop worthwhile.
- Icon
- Fish-within-a-Fish fossil
- Big idea
- Kansas beneath an inland sea
- Institution
- Fort Hays State University
Quick guide
- Start
- Geologic-time sequence
- Pause
- Read how each specimen was preserved
Plan a useful visit
- Seaway
- Use build a mental map of water depth, shoreline, and food webs.
- Fish-within-a-Fish
- Look beyond spectacle to the evidence of prey, timing, and fossilization.
- Methods
- Notice where the display separates original fossil from reconstruction.
- Present
- Confirm end with living Kansas ecology to reconnect ancient and modern landscapes.
Good to know
The celebrated Fish-within-a-Fish records a roughly 13-foot predator that swallowed a 6-foot fish shortly before dying.
Notice these
- Cretaceous marine fossils
- Fish-within-a-Fish
- Regional natural history
- Changing special exhibitions