This Ammonite Was Fossilized Outside Its Shell The bizarre fossil is one of very few records of soft tissue in a creature better known as a whorled shell. A fossil of a 150 million-year-old ammonite in southern Germany with its insides on the outside.Credit...Klug et al., Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, 2021 By Sabrina Imbler Jan. 31, 2021 If anxious humans have nightmares of being naked in public, an anxious ammonite may have dreamed about swimming around without its shell, its soft body exposed to the elements and the leering eyes of predators. For one unfortunate ammonite in the Late Jurassic, this was no dream but a harsh reality. The animal died utterly unclad, outside its whorled shell, and was buried this way. According to a study published recently in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, the ammonite’s death made it an extraordinary fossil — one of very few records of soft tissue in a creature that is most often immortalized as a shell