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Mosasaurini is an extinct tribe of mosasaurine mosasaurs who lived during the Late Cretaceous and whose fossils have been found in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Oceania, with questionable occurrences in Asia.
Mosasaurus (/ ˌ m oʊ z ə ˈ s ɔːr ə s /; "lizard of the Meuse River") is the type genus (defining example) of the mosasaurs, an extinct group of aquatic squamate reptiles. It lived from about 82 to 66 million years ago during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous.
A mosasaur with an almost crocodilian-like head and was one of the few kinds to live in freshwater. It lived in rivers and hunted both aquatic and terrestrial animals in the area. †Hainosaurus †Hainosaurus bernardi ; 70.6–66 Ma Sweden A tylosaurine mosasaur that had more vertebrae in the neck and tail than its Tylosaurus cousin. It is one ...
The smaller mosasaurs may have spent some time in fresh water, hunting for food. The largest mosasaur Mosasaurus hoffmannii was the apex predator of the Late Cretaceous oceans, reaching more than 11 metres (36 ft) in length and weighing up to 10 metric tons (11 short tons) in body mass. [14]
Plotosaurus ("swimmer lizard") is an extinct genus of mosasaurs who lived during the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) in what is now North America.Only one species is recognized, P. bennisoni, described by Berkeley paleontologist Charles Lewis Camp in 1942 from fossils discovered in California.
The specific placement of Mosasauria within the Squamata has been controversial since its inception, with early debate focusing on the classification of the mosasaurs. Cuvier was the first scientist to deeply analyze their possible taxonomic placement through Mosasaurus. While his original 1808 hypothesis that the genus was a lizard with ...
Tylosaurus was the third new genus of mosasaur to be described from North America behind Clidastes and Platecarpus and the first in Kansas. [13] The early history of the genus as a taxon was subject to complications spurred by the infamous rivalry between American paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh during the Bone Wars.
An 1854 depiction of Mosasaurus in Crystal Palace Park. One of the earliest paleoart depictions of Mosasaurus is a life-size concrete sculpture constructed by natural history sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins between 1852 and 1854 as part of the collection of sculptures of prehistoric animals on display at the Crystal Palace Park in London.