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MosasaurTooth, Prehistoric Marine Reptile, Genuine Tooth, Upper Cretaceous, Worldwide Shipping
Forsale is a Mosasaur tooth. The Mosasaurwas a very large prehistoric marine reptile that is believed to be the ancestorof modern day lizards. It is estimated to have been between 50 feet – 70feet long. Mosasaurs lived during thecretaceous period. This tooth originates from Morocco.
· The tooth itself measures about 1.75-2 inches long (4.4 to 5cm) long andmay differ slightly from what is pictured in the photos.
· A tooth will be selected at random from thelot pictured.
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Mosasaurus (Greek for "Meuselizard")
Habitat:
Oceans worldwide
Historical Period:
Late Cretaceous (70-65 million yearsago)
Size and Weight:
About 50 feet long and 15 tons
Diet:
Fish, squids, and shellfish
Distinguishing Characteristics:
Enormous size; blunt, alligator-likehead; fin on end of tail, hydrodynamic build
AboutMosasaurus
The remains of Mosasaurus werediscovered well before educated society knew anything about evolution,dinosaurs, or marine reptiles—in a mine in Holland in the late 18th century(hence this creature's name,in honor ofthe nearby Meuse river).Importantly, the unearthing of these fossils led early naturalists like GeorgesCuvier to speculate, for the first time, about the possibility of species goingextinct, which flew in the face of accepted religious dogma of the time. (Until the lateEnlightenment, most educated people believed that God created all the world'sanimals in Biblical times, and the exact same animals existed 5,000 years agoas do today. Did we mention that they also had no conception of deep geologictime?) These fossils were variously interpreted as belonging to fish, whalesand even crocodiles; the closest guess, by the Dutch naturalist Aadrian Camper,was that they were giant monitor lizards!
It was Georges Cuvier whoestablished that the fearsome, 50-foot-longMosasaurus was a giant memberof the family of marine reptiles known as mosasaurs, which were characterized by theirlarge heads, powerful jaws, streamlined bodies andhydrodynamicfrontand rear flippers. Mosasaurs were only distantly related to the pliosaurs and plesiosaurs that preceded them (andwhich they largely supplanted from dominance of the world's oceans during the late Cretaceous), recently, evolutionarybiologists believe they were most closely related to modern-day snakes andmonitor lizards. The mosasaurs themselves went extinct 65 million years ago,along with their dinosaur and pterosaur cousins, by which time they may alreadyhave been succumbing to competition from better-adapted sharks.
As with many animals that have lenttheir names to entire families, we know comparatively less about Mosasaurusthan we do about better-attested mosasaurs like Plotosaurus andTylosaurus.The early confusion about this marine reptile is reflected inthe various genera to which it was assigned in the course of the 19th century,including (take a deep breath) Batrachiosaurus, Batrachotherium, Drepanodon,Lesticodus, Baseodon, Nectoportheus and Pterycollosaurus. There have also beenclose to 20 named species of Mosasaurus, which gradually fell by the wayside astheir fossil specimens were assigned to other mosasaur genera; today, all thatremain are the type species, M. hoffmanni, and four others.
By the way, that shark-swallowingMosasaurus in Jurassic World mayseem impressive (both to people inthe fictional park and people in the real-life movie-theater audience), butit's completely out of scale: a real, 15-ton Mosasaurus would have been anorder of magnitude smaller and much less impressive than its cinematicdepiction—andalmost certainlyincapable of dragging a gigantic Indominusrex into the water!
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