Thalassotitan atrox is a huge new mosasaur from Morocco. Thalassotitan hunted other marine reptiles with large jaws and teeth similar to those of killer whales.
Sea monsters were present 66 million years ago. The seas were ruled by giant marine reptiles.
Huge marine lizards grow up to 40 feet in length and are called mosasaurs. They were distant cousins of iguanas.
The mosasaurs looked like a Komodo dragon with flippers. The last 25 million years of the Cretaceous saw mosasaurs become larger and more specialized, taking niches once filled by marine reptiles. Some people evolved to eat small prey. Ammonites and clams were crushed by others. The mosasaur Thalassotitan atrox evolved to prey on all the other marine reptiles.
Outside of Casablanca, the remains of the new species were dug up. The Atlantic flooded northern Africa at the end of the last century. The waters fed the blooms of plankton. The marine reptiles became food for the Thalassotitan when they were fed small fish and large fish.
Thalassotitan was the size of a killer whale and had an enormous skull. Thalassotitan had a short, wide muzzle and massive, conical teeth similar to those of an orca. These allow it to take and destroy large prey. Thalassotitan was an apex predator that sat at the top of the food chain. Today's killer whales and great white sharks are the same size as the mosasaur.
Thalassotitan's teeth are often broken and worn, but eating fish wouldn't have made that happen. The giant mosasaur bit into the bones of other marine reptile and tore them apart. Some of the teeth are so badly damaged that they are almost completely gone.
The prey's remains were fossils.
Thalassotitan's victims may have been found. The teeth and bones from the same beds were eaten away. Large fish skulls, a sea turtle, a half-meter long plesiosaur head, and jaws of at least three different mosasaur species are among the fossils with this peculiar damage. Thalassotitan would have eaten them in his stomach.
The lead author of the study said it was circumstantial evidence.
We don't know which species of animal ate all the other mosasaurs. The bones of marine reptile killed and eaten by a predator are in our possession.
Thalassotitan is a mosasaur that is specialized to prey on other marine reptile. That is likely not a coincidence.
Thalassotitan was a threat to everyone in the ocean. The mosasaurs have injuries to their face and jaws from fighting other mosasaurs. The wounds in Thalassotitan were so common that they suggested fights over feeding grounds.
The study leader said that the animal was frightening. Imagine a Komodo Dragon crossed with a great white shark.
The mosasaur is a modern animal that lived in the last million years of the Age of Dinosaurs. It suggests that mosasaurs weren't in decline before the asteroid hit. They were able to flourish instead.
Professor Nour- Eddine Jalil is a co-author on a paper from the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Life was rich and diversified before the dinosaur era, where animals had to specialize in order to survive. The megapredator at the top of the food chain is taken on by Thalassotitan.
Longrich said there was more to be done. One of the richest and most diverse marine faunas can be found inrocco. We are just beginning to understand the biology of the mosasaur.
More information: Nicholas R. Longrich et al, Thalassotitan atrox, a giant predatory mosasaurid (Squamata) from the Upper Maastrichtian Phosphates of Morocco, Cretaceous Research (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2022.105315Dr. Longrich wrote a post about the research onthalassotitan the killer mosasaur.
Journal information: Cretaceous Research
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