Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]
Instead, they primarily relied on stratigraphic associations and Cuvier's 1808 research on the holotype skull. Thus, in-depth research on the placement of Mosasaurus was not undertaken until the discovery of more complete mosasaur fossils during the late 19th century, which reignited research on the placement of mosasaurs among squamates. [8]
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).
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.
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 ...