Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Lastly, mosasaur bones and teeth are also known from Colombia, [43] Brazil, [35] and Chile. [44] Many of the so-called 'dinosaur' remains found on New Zealand are actually mosasaurs and plesiosaurs [citation needed], both being Mesozoic predatory marine reptiles.
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.
In 2003, Richard Ellis speculated that the remains may have belonged to M. missouriensis; [36] however competing speculations include that of a tylosaurine mosasaur or an elasmosaurid plesiosaur. [37] The earliest description of North American fossils firmly attributed to the genus Mosasaurus was made in 1818 by naturalist Samuel Latham Mitchill.
Paleontologists recently described the previously unknown mosasaur from fossils found near the North Dakota town of Walhalla. The town’s name comes from Valhalla, the feasting hall of Norse ...
Phosphate diggers in the Negev Desert of Israel discovered the remains of a 40-foot mosasaur that was sent to Copenhagen, Denmark for preparation. This mosasaur was nicknamed "Oronosaurus" after the phosphate field in which it was discovered, but would be formally named as a new species of Prognathodon, P. currii, in 2002. [100]
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.
Megapterygius is a medium-sized mosasaur with an estimated skull length of 0.8 metres (2.6 ft) and a body length of approximately 6 metres (20 ft). Both the front and hind flippers are longer than the skull.
A 2022 analysis found that mosasaurs were most closely related to Varanoidea, and stated that they "consider most characters previously reported as supporting the Pythonomorph Hypothesis to be problematic, because of incomplete fossil preparation, artefacts of taphonomy, limited comparisons, misinterpretations of anatomy, incomplete taxon ...