Accurate interpretation of fossils of one organism inside another is essential for understanding predator-prey relationships, food-web structure, and energy flows in ancient ecosystems. Fossils of a fish inside the mouth or stomach of another fish are thought to represent examples of normal predation in such ecosystems (Viohl 1990; Maisey 1994; McAllister 2003; Ebert et al. 2015). Further, so-called “aspiration” fossils of a relatively large fish partly inserted headfirst into the mouth of another fish (Fig. 1A) often are considered to be the result of ingestion of over-sized normal prey leading to the death...
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