researchers They discovered the fossil of a giant sea lizard in Morocco, which they named Thalassotitan atrox, occupied the top of the predatory niche. with huge jaws and teeth like those of killer whales Thalassotitan It preyed on other marine reptiles: plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and other mosasaurs, that is, large extinct aquatic lizards.
At the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, sea monsters really existed. While dinosaurs thrived on land, mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles, dominated the seas.
But mosasaurs weren’t actually dinosaurs, but Giant sea lizards that reach 12 meters in length. They were distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards.
Mosasaurs resembled a Komodo dragon, with flippers instead of legs and a shark-like tail fin. During the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous, they became larger and more specialized, occupying niches previously occupied by marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Some have evolved to eat small prey such as fish and squid. this Thalassotitan atroxon your own behalf evolved to hunt all other marine reptiles.
The remains of the new species were unearthed in Morocco, about an hour from Casablanca. There, towards the end of the Cretaceous, the Atlantic flooded North Africa. Nutrient-rich waters gush from the depths feeding the plankton blooms. This material fed small fish, which in turn fed larger fish, which fed mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, and so on, and these marine reptiles became food for giant carnivores. Thalassotitan.
The species now discovered had a gigantic 1.4-metre skull. and it reached a length of 12 meters, larger than an orca. While most mosasaurs had long jaws and fine teeth for catching fish, Thalassotitan He had a short, broad nose andgigantic conical teeth like orca’s. These allow it to capture and shred large prey.. These adaptations suggest it is an apex predator, meaning it is at the top of the food chain. This giant mosasaur occupied the same ecological niche as killer whales and great white sharks today.
teeth Thalassotitan Although eating fish does not cause this type of tooth wear, it often breaks and wears away. Instead, it’s possible that the giant mosasaur attacked other marine reptiles, breaking and breaking their teeth when they bit and smashed their bones. Some teeth are so damaged that they are almost crushed to the root.
Surprisingly, possible remains of victims Thalassotitan. Fossils recovered from the same beds include gnawed teeth and bones of large predatory fish, a sea turtle, a half-metre long plesiosaur head, and jaws and skulls from at least three different species of mosasaurs. they were digested in the stomach. Thalassotitan before spitting out your bones.
“We can’t say for sure which animal species ate all these other mosasaurs. But we do have bones from marine reptiles that were killed and eaten by a large predator. And we found them in the same place. Thalassotitan, a species that fits the profile of the killer: a mosasaur that specializes in preying on other marine reptiles. D., Senior Lecturer at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath and lead author of the study. “It’s probably not a coincidence,” said Nick Longrich. Cretaceous Survey.
this Thalassotitan was a widespread threat across the oceans, including others. Thalassotitan. The colossal mosasaurs have sustained wounds from a fierce fight with other congeners, with wounds on their face and jaws from the fights. Similar wounds appear on other mosasaurs, but Thalassotitan these wounds were extremely common, suggesting frequent and intense fights over feeding grounds or mates.
The researcher led by Dr. “It was an incredible and frightening animal,” said Nick Longrich. “Imagine a Komodo dragon being crossed with a great white shark. t-rex crossed with an orca,” he explained.
new mosasaur It lived in the last million years of the age of the dinosaurs, contemporary of animals such as t-rex Y triceratops. Combined with recent discoveries of mosasaurs from Morocco, it shows that these animals were not in decline prior to the asteroid impact that triggered the Cretaceous mass extinction. On the contrary, they multiplied.
Professor Nour-Eddine Jalil, co-author of the paper, from the Natural History Museum in Paris, said: “Phosphate fossils from Morocco offer an unprecedented window into paleobiodiversity in the late Cretaceous.
“They tell us how rich and diverse life was just before the end of the ‘age of dinosaurs,’ when animals had to specialize in order to have a place in their ecosystems.halassotitan It completes the picture by taking on the role of the mega-predator at the top of the food chain.”
“There’s still a lot more to do,” Longrich said. “Morocco has one of the richest and most diverse marine fauna known from the Cretaceous. We are just beginning to understand the diversity and biology of mosasaurs.”
Reference work: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195667122001793?via%3Dihub
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