Tag: mosasaur
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Geologists Stumble Upon Remains of Giant ‘Sea Monster’ in Mississippi, Likely the Largest Mosasaur Ever Identified in the State
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about the discovery of a very large mosasaur in Mississippi. The animal was about 30 feet long and lived about 66 million year ago. A single vertebra was more 7 inches wide. It was found sticking out of the mud of the Prarie Bluff Formation of Oktibbeha County in east-central…
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Fossil find in northwest Iowa is one of a kind
Kurt Spearing, an associate professor of natural and mathematical sciences at Morningside University, displays three vertebra from a mosasaur The Sioux City Journal has a story about the discovery of a mosasaur vertebral segment in Iowa. The fossil is about 4 inches long and consists of three fused vertebrae. It was found by Tyler McDonald…
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Video for ESCONI October 2023 General Meeting – “Microfossils to Mosasaurs: A Journey Through the University of Iowa Paleontology Repository”
Here is the video for the October 2023 General Meeting. The speaker was Tiffany Adrain, who works as the Paleontology Repository Collections Manager at the University of Iowa. The topic of her presentation was “Microfossils to Mosasaurs: A Journey Through the University of Iowa Paleontology Repository”.
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Scientists discover fossils of giant sea lizard that ruled the oceans 66 million years ago
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of a huge mosasaur in Morocco. It’s been named Thalassotitan atrox, and it probably preyed on other large marine reptiles like plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and even other mosasaurs. Mosasaurs are not dinosaurs, but actually are distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards. The research was published in…
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Giant Sea Lizards Ruled the Waves While T. Rex Roamed on Land
Smithsonian Magazine has a post about mosasaurs. A new paper in the journal PaleoBios finds that mosasaurs ruled the oceans up until the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous some 66 million years ago. It had been theorized they went extinct millions of years before the impact. Fossil vertebra from the Hell…
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New Mosasaur Species Uncovered in Kansas
SciNews has a story about a new Mosasaur found in Kansas. The animal, named Ectenosaurus clidastoides, lived during the Cretaceous Period about 80 million years ago in what is now western Kansas. Details were published in a paper in the journal Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. The newly-identified mosasaur species lived during the Late Cretaceous…
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First Soft-Shelled Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about dinosaur eggs. Nature had two articles that found evidence that dinosaur eggs were soft-shelled. The first study found evidence of soft-shelled eggs by analyzing fossilized Protoceratops and Mussaurus egg shells. The evidence suggests eggs similar to those of turtles. The second paper identified an enigmatic fossil, commonly referred to…
