A team of paleontologists from the Netherlands, Canada and the United Kingdom has examined the wear marks on the teeth of several species of mosasaurs, large aquatic reptiles from the Late Cretaceous epoch that filled a range of ecological niches within marine ecosystems.
Mosasaurs were a group of large predatory marine reptiles that inhabited all of the world’s oceans during the Late Cretaceous epoch, between 90 and 66 million years ago.
These creatures went extinct during the end-Cretaceous extinction event which killed non-avian dinosaurs and 75% of life on the planet.
Although their relationship to other reptiles is not completely certain, mosasaurs appear to be closely related to a group known as monitor lizards.
Most mosasaurs had two bladelike, serrated ridges on the front and back of the tooth to help cut prey.
“Mosasaurid reptiles were large, predominantly marine squamates, and one of only a few groups of squamates that became fully aquatic,” said Dr. Femke Holwerda, a paleontologist at Utrecht University and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
“During the final c. 30 million years of the Cretaceous period, mosasaurs rapidly evolved a wide array of morphologies, and occupied a range of ecological niches in marine ecosystems around the globe.”
“By the end of the Cretaceous they were firmly established as a group, often hypothesized as apex predators in most ecosystems they inhabited.”
In their research, Dr. Holwerda and colleagues focused on mosasaur species that lived in what is now the southeastern part of the Netherlands and northeastern Belgium during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period, between 68 and 66 million years ago.
Currently, five such species are recognized: the large (over 10 m long) Mosasaurus hoffmanni and Prognathodon saturator; the intermediately-sized Prognathodon cf. sectorius and Plioplatecarpus marshi; and the diminutive (3 m long) Carinodens belgicus.
“We were curious whether different…
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