The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Along with recent discoveries of mosasaurs from Morocco, it suggests that mosasaurs weren’t in decline before the asteroid impact that drove the Cretaceous mass extinction. The new mosasaur lived in the final million years of the Age of Dinosaurs, a contemporary of animals like T. “Imagine a Komodo Dragon crossed with a great white shark crossed with a T. “Thalassotitan was an amazing, terrifying animal,” said Dr. Other mosasaurs show similar injuries, but in Thalassotitan these wounds were exceptionally common, suggesting frequent, intense fights over feeding grounds or mates. The huge mosasaurs bear injuries sustained in violent combat with other mosasaurs, with injuries to their face and jaws sustained in fights. Thalassotitan was a threat to everything in the oceans-including other Thalassotitan. “And in the same location, we find Thalassotitan, a species that fits the profile of the killer-it’s a mosasaur specialized to prey on other marine reptiles. But we have the bones of marine reptiles and eaten by a large killed predator. “We can’t say for certain which species of animal ate all these other mosasaurs. Nick Longrich, Senior Lecturer from the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath and lead author on the study, published in Cretaceous Research. They would have been digested in Thalassotitan’s stomach before it spat out their bones. Fossils with this peculiar damage include large predatory fish, a sea turtle, a half-meter long plesiosaur head, and jaws and skulls of at least three different mosasaur species. Fossils from the same beds show damage from acids, with teeth and bone eaten away. Remarkably, possible remains of Thalassotitan’s victims have been discovered. Some teeth are so heavily damaged they have been almost ground down to the root. Instead, this suggests that the giant mosasaur attacked other marine reptiles, chipping, breaking, and grinding its teeth as it bit into their bones and tore them apart. Thalassotitan’s teeth are often broken and worn, however eating fish wouldn’t have produced this sort of tooth wear. The giant mosasaur occupied the same ecological niche as today’s killer whales and great white sharks. These adaptations suggest Thalassotitan was an apex predator, sitting at the top of the food chain. These let it seize and rip apart huge prey. While most mosasaurs had long jaws and slender teeth for catching fish, Thalassotitan had a short, wide muzzle and massive, conical teeth like those of an orca. Thalassotitan, had an enormous skull measuring 1.4 meters (5 feet long), and grew to nearly 30 feet (9 meters) long, the size of a killer whale. Those fed small fish, feeding larger fish, which fed mosasaurs and plesiosaurs-and so on, with these marine reptiles becoming food for the giant, carnivorous Thalassotitan. Nutrient rich waters upwelling from the depths fed blooms of plankton. Here, near the end of the Cretaceous, the Atlantic flooded northern Africa. The remains of the new species were dug up in Morocco, about an hour outside Casablanca. The new mosasaur, named Thalassotitan atrox, evolved to prey on all the other marine reptiles. Some evolved to eat small prey like fish and squid. Mosasaurs became larger and more specialized in the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous, taking niches once filled by marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Mosasaurs looked like a Komodo dragon with flippers instead of legs, and a shark-like tail fin. They were distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards.
Mosasaurs weren’t dinosaurs, but enormous marine lizards growing up to 12 meters (40 feet) in length. While dinosaurs flourished on land, the seas were ruled by the mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles. With massive jaws and teeth like those of killer whales, Thalassotitan hunted other marine reptiles-plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and other mosasaurs.Īt the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago, sea monsters really existed. Researchers have discovered a huge new mosasaur from Morocco, named Thalassotitan atrox, which filled the apex predator niche. Artist’s representation of Thalassotitan atrox.
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