It’s nice to step away from the computer and do some fossil preparation! I’m using compressed air which is funneled through a ‘pen’ removing the rock matrix to reveal the fossil. In this case an ammonite (bottom right) from the Jurassic, collected at Charmouth beach in Dorset, England.
It looks like a few pieces of the shell have broken off that could be where it was damaged. It could also perhaps be predation marks where it was approached from behind and a creature with a beak such as a squid (belemnites and predatory fish may also be culprits) attacked the ammonite which might be how it died.
You can see lots of smaller ammonites as well on the block that may have collected around each other via currents on the seafloor with everything then being buried by sediments and fossilised around 200 Million years ago.
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