Posted on 08/25/2022 8:29:32 AM PDT by Red Badger
Lizard Skull Fossil Closeup
One of the Thalassotitan skulls. (University of Bath)
The discovery of incredible fossils of a giant marine lizard reveals how this ancient extinct beast would have ruled the sea 66 million years ago.
The beast is a newly discovered species of mosasaur, giant marine reptiles that hunted the oceans during the Late Cretaceous.
It's called Thalassotitan atrox, and wear on its teeth along with other remains found at its excavation site suggest that this intimidating animal was no gentle giant – but feasted on difficult prey such as sea turtles, plesiosaurs, and other mosasaurs.
Other mosasaurs sought smaller prey, like fish, or ammonites (which weren't actually always that small).
Thalassotitan skull fossil
One of the Thalassotitan skulls. (University of Bath)
This means Thalassotitan likely occupied a spot at the very top of the food web, maintaining ecosystems by keeping the other predators in check.
"Thalassotitan was an amazing, terrifying animal," says paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Nick Longrich of the University of Bath in the UK. "Imagine a Komodo dragon crossed with a great white shark crossed with a T. rex crossed with a killer whale."
Artistic reconstruction of Thalassotitan astrox. (Andrey Atuchin)
There is no reptile alive today that is on the scale of mosasaurs, which could reach lengths of 12 meters (40 feet) – twice the size of the largest modern reptiles, the crocodilians. But mosasaurs are related, instead and distantly, to modern snakes and iguanas.
Mosasaurs were better adapted to a fully aquatic lifestyle than the marine iguanas of the Galapagos. They had a reptilian head, but flippers instead of clawed feet, and a tail sporting shark-like fins.
Different mosasaur species could also specialize in different prey, given their different teeth. Some teeth were small and spiky, good for fish and squid; others had blunter teeth and crushing jaws, perfect for shelled creatures.
But, given that the animals don't seem to have a good sense of smell, it's likely that they were predominantly predators, rather than scavengers.
Analyses suggest that mosasaurs feasted on fish, cephalopods, turtles, molluscs, other mosasaurs, and even birds. Thalassotitan seems to have been among the fiercest.
The fossils were discovered in the phosphate fossil beds of Morocco, a region rich in diverse and excellently preserved Cretaceous and Miocene fossils.
The remains include skulls, vertebrae, limb bones, and phalanges. Together, they allowed for a complete description of Thalassotitan's skull, jaw, and teeth, as well as the skeleton, shoulders, and forelimb.
The animal, Longrich and his team found, could likely grow to a length of around 9 to 10 meters – slightly larger than an orca. However its skull was nearly twice the length of the orca's, coming in at around 1.5 meters long.
Chart showing the impressive size of Thalassotitan. (University of Bath)
Unlike other mosasaurs which had slender muzzles, Thalassotitan's jaw was wide and short, with large conical teeth that would have been perfect for seizing and rending prey. And these teeth contained another clue as to the animal's diet: many of them are broken and worn, damage that would not occur from a diet predominantly consisting of soft prey.
According to the researchers, this suggests that Thalassotitan chipped and broke its teeth on hard surfaces, such as turtle shells, and the bones of other, perhaps more timid, mosasaurs.
This is supported by other fossils found near the Thalassotitan remains: the bones of large predatory fish, a sea turtle shell, a plesiosaur skull, and the bones of at least three different mosasaur species.
These remains all show signs of acid wear, as you might expect might occur in digestive acids in the belly of a giant beast, before being regurgitated back out. That is circumstantial evidence, the researchers note; but it's still pretty interesting.
Wear on the teeth of a small Thalassotitan. (Longrich et al., Cretac. Res., 2020)
"We can't say for certain which species of animal ate all these other mosasaurs," Longrich explains.
"But we have the bones of marine reptiles killed and eaten by a large predator. 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. That's probably not a coincidence."
In the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous, mosasaurs became more and more specialized and diverse. The discovery of Thalassotitan suggests that mosasaurs were even more diverse than we thought – and that their ecosystem was alive and thriving, with enough prey diversity enough to support this predator diversification.
In turn, this has some interesting implications for the times leading up to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction 65 million years ago. It implies that, rather than declining and leaving the world vulnerable, as some have thought, biodiversity was going great guns, possibly in the wake of a smaller mid-Cretaceous extinction event.
More digging into the fossil beds of Morocco should clarify this intriguing possibility.
"There's so much more to be done," Longrich says.
"Morocco has one of the richest and most diverse marine faunas known from the Cretaceous. We're just getting started understanding the diversity and the biology of the mosasaurs."
The paper has been published in Cretaceous Research.
Big Lizard Ping!........................
We’re going to need an even bigger boat!!!
JOB 41:1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?
3 Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will it make an agreement with you
for you to take it as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird
or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
6 Will traders barter for it?
Will they divide it up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons
or its head with fishing spears?
8 If you lay a hand on it,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
9 Any hope of subduing it is false;
the mere sight of it is overpowering.
10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it.
Who then is able to stand against me?
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.
12 “I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs,
its strength and its graceful form.
13 Who can strip off its outer coat?
Who can penetrate its double coat of armor[b]?
14 Who dares open the doors of its mouth,
ringed about with fearsome teeth?
15 Its back has[c] rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
16 each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.
17 They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Flames stream from its mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
21 Its breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from its mouth.
22 Strength resides in its neck;
dismay goes before it.
23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.
24 Its chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.
25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before its thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches it has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron it treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make it flee;
slingstones are like chaff to it.
29 A club seems to it but a piece of straw;
it laughs at the rattling of the lance.
30 Its undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
31 It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it;
one would think the deep had white hair.
33 Nothing on earth is its equal—
a creature without fear.
34 It looks down on all that are haughty;
it is king over all that are proud.”
Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin
Imagine the size of the side of hush puppies. Thanks Red Badger.
“A Giant Lizard Who Ruled With Teeth And Terror”
Hillary Clinton?
Thassalottateethindere!
I was thinking my brother’s ex wife.
5.56mm
Thassalottateethindere!
Heh, heh..... your word amuses me.
Glad you liked it. I sent yer approval feedback to our Neologisms desk.
We have to add it to our spellchecker's vocabulary, since it slipped through with a typo.
The correct spelling is thassalottateefindere, of course.
Those grinning skeletal remains were from creatures of the genus astronomical Mozezsaurs, so they were living in Biblical times, just like us.
LOL
I am the Lizard King.
I can do anything.
Tyranasoaurs Rex could waste this overrated fish bait. They could meet up in a swamp.
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