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Mosasaurus fossils have been found in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Western Asia, and Antarctica. This distribution encompassed a wide range of oceanic climates including tropical, subtropical, temperate, and subpolar. Mosasaurus was a common large predator in these oceans and was positioned at the top of the food chain.
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]
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 ...
In life, the animal would have measured about 24 feet (7.3 meters) long and had a long face slimmer than those of its mosasaur cousins, said lead study author Amelia Zietlow, a paleontologist and ...
Jormungandr is a large mosasaur. The holotype skull measures 72 centimeters (28 in) in total length and the lower jaw is 80.8 centimeters (31.8 in) long. [ 2 ] Based on these measurements, Zietlow and colleagues estimated a total body length of 5.4–7.3 meters (18–24 ft).
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.
Skeleton of Clidastes liodontus mounted as if pursuing a fossil sea turtle. Russell (1967, pp. 123–124) [6] defined the Mosasaurinae as differing from all other mosasaurs as follows: "Small rostrum present or absent anterior to premaxillary teeth.
Life restoration of the mosasaur Hainosaurus feeding on a cephalopod. This timeline of mosasaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, and taxonomic revisions of mosasaurs, a group of giant marine lizards that lived during the Late Cretaceous Epoch. Although mosasaurs went ...