13.3" Fossil Mosasaur Tooth And Jaw - Morocco

Fossil Mosasaur Tooth And Jaw - Morocco #113117

This is an excellent fossil rooted Moasaur (Prognathodon) tooth and jaw of a Mosasaur (Halisaurus) from Phosphate Deposits near, Khouribga, Morocco. The Platecarpus tooth is 4.8" including the root. The tooth has been broken and an indentation worn in the root. This occurred prior to or during fossilization. The Halisaurus jaw is a 4.2" portion of the mandible (lower jaw) from the right side of the skull and contains 5 teeth. This is an incredible specimen with no restoration or compositing.

Artists reconstruction of a Halisaurus. By Nobu Tamura

Halisaurus is a comparatively small Mosasaur, maxing out at around 10 feet in length. It was a sleek and likely quick member of the family. Besides its small size, it had distinctive backward-curving teeth likely used for grasping slippery prey like fish. A paper describing this species can be found below.

Description of new specimens of Halisaurus arambourgi BARDET & PEREDA SOBERBIOLA, 2005 and the relationships of halisaurinae

Mosasaurs were a family of enormous marine reptiles that truly dominated the seas 90 million years ago, ruling during the last 20-25 million years of the Cretaceous period. With the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and decline of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs diversified to become prolific apex predators in nearly every habitat of the oceanic world.

Artist's reconstruction of the mosasaur Prognathodon saturator.

Larger mosasaurs were the great leviathans of their time, extending 10–15 meters, or 33–49 feet long. Hainosaurus holds the record for the longest mosasaur at a seemingly impossible 57 feet. The smaller genera were still an impressive 10–20 feet long.

Mosasaurs probably evolved from semi-aquatic scaled reptiles, perhaps more similar in appearance to modern-day monitor lizards. They had double-hinged jaws and flexible skulls much like that of a snake which enabled them to gulp down their prey almost whole.

The gruesome unchewed contents of fossilized mosasaur guts have revealed a varied diet of sea birds, ammonites, smaller marine lizards, possibly sharks, and even other mosasaurs. Ammonites were especially crunchy mosasaur treats. They were abundant in the Cretaceous seas, and some mosasaurs had specialized teeth for the job.

Mosasaurs probably lurked for an ambush, rather than hunt, using their powerful tail flukes for extra thrust to dart out and swallow unsuspecting prey. Non-reflective, keeled scales may have been a great advantage to the mosasaur sneak-attack.

Mosasaurs breathed air and gave birth to live young. The bronchi leading to the lungs run parallel to each other, instead of splitting apart from one another as in monitors and other terrestrial reptiles. They were well-adapted to living in the warm, shallow, epicontinental seas of the period.

Although mosasaurs diversified and proliferated at a spectacular rate, their specialization is considered the source of their demise when marine systems collapsed at the end of the Cretaceous.