2.53" Fossil Plesiosaur Tooth - Cretaceous Reptile

This is a large and well preserved tooth of the large dinosaur aged, marine reptile Zarafasaura oceanis. This specimen is quite large at 2.53" long. There are a couple of repaired cracks in the tooth and a small gap fill in one of the cracks. It was collected as a byproduct of the phosphate mining operations in the Oulad Abdoun Basin of Morocco.

Plesiosaurs where long-necked marine reptiles with four flippers that appeared in the Triassic and died out along with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. They reached quite larges sizes, some species as long at 17 meters, and caught slow moving prey. Plesiosaurs breathed air, and bore live young; there are indications that they were warm-blooded.

This species of of Plesiosaur was redescribed from Plesiosaurus mauritanicus to Zarafasaura oceanis in a 2011 paper which can be found at:

A NEW SPECIMEN OF THE ELASMOSAURID PLESIOSAUR ZARAFASAURA OCEANIS FROM THE UPPER CRETACEOUS (MAASTRICHTIAN)OF MOROCCO