Approximately 160 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs, giant marine reptiles ruled the seas. One such creature, an ichthyosaur, swam in a sea near present-day Peterborough, England. This huge animal, shaped like a dolphin, was a quick swimmer that chased prey such as ammonites and squid for sustenance.

However, on this day, luck was not on its side.

A pliosaur, an even more imposing reptile with 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long), dagger-like teeth, attacked the ichthyosaur from underneath, biting with such force during the struggle that the tip of one of its teeth broke off in the middle of the ichthyosaur’s vertebra. The ichthyosaur’s body fell in pieces to the ocean floor, where the pliosaur finished its meal—a vivid scene inspired by the contents of a drawer in the Peabody’s Division of Vertebrate Paleontology.