This distribution encompassed a wide range of oceanic climates including tropical, subtropical, temperate, and subpolar climates. Mosasaurus fossils have been found in places as diverse as North and South America, Europe, Africa, Western Asia, and Antarctica. Another five species still nominally classified within Mosasaurus are planned to be reassessed in a future study.įossil evidence suggests Mosasaurus inhabited much of the Atlantic Ocean and the seaways adjacent to it. A redescription of the type specimen in 2017 helped resolve the taxonomy issue and confirmed at least five species to be within the genus. As a result, more than fifty different species have been attributed to the genus in the past. ![]() hoffmannii led to a historically problematic classification. lemonnieri-but an unclear diagnosis (description of distinguishing features) of the type species M. hoffmannii to the slender and serpentine M. There is considerable morphological variability across the currently-recognized species in Mosasaurus-from the robustly-built M. Mosasaurus was a predator possessing excellent vision to compensate for its poor sense of smell, and a high metabolic rate suggesting it was endothermic ("warm-blooded"), an adaptation in squamates only found in mosasaurs. Its tail was long and ended in a downward bend and a paddle-like fluke. Its four limbs were shaped into robust paddles to steer the animal underwater. The skull of Mosasaurus was equipped with robust jaws capable of swinging back and forth and strong muscles capable of powerful bites using dozens of large teeth adapted for cutting prey. hoffmannii, to be up to 17.1 meters (56 ft), making it one of the largest mosasaurs, although some scientists consider this an overestimation with recent estimates suggesting a length closer to 13 meters (43 ft). Traditional interpretations have estimated the maximum length of the largest species, M. The exact affinities of Mosasaurus as a squamate remain controversial, and scientists continue to debate whether its closest living relatives are monitor lizards or snakes. Cuvier did not designate a scientific name for the new animal, and this was done by William Daniel Conybeare in 1822 when he named it Mosasaurus in reference to its origin in fossil deposits near the Meuse River. ![]() This concept was revolutionary at the time and helped support the then-developing ideas of extinction. In 1808, naturalist Georges Cuvier concluded that it belonged to a giant marine lizard with similarities to monitor lizards but otherwise unlike any known living animal. ![]() One skull discovered around 1780, which was seized by France during the French Revolutionary Wars for its scientific value, was famously nicknamed the "great animal of Maastricht". The genus was one of the first Mesozoic marine reptiles known to science-the first fossils of Mosasaurus were found as skulls in a chalk quarry near the Dutch city of Maastricht in the late 18th century, and were initially thought to be the bones of crocodiles or whales. It lived from about 82 to 66 million years ago during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous. 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.
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