by Farrah, Shelby, and Gina, Brookwood Middle School
Mosasaur
This marine reptile lived in the Cretaceous Sea that covered most of central and southern Alabama about eighty million years ago. The mosasaur was high on the food chain and ate anything it wanted like squid, turtles, fish, or other mosasaur. One of the ways scientist classify a mosasaur is by studying its teeth. Mosasaurs are not close relatives to dinosaurs. They are closely related to a group of lizards known as Varinads.
Bossie’s discovery
This tylosaurus was discovered along the Tombigbee River in Green County in early 1993 by Randy Comer and Chuck Parker two U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Rangers. They quickly notified scientists at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, who, with the corps’ permission, spent several weeks recovering the specimen. The tylosaurus was nicknamed “Bossie” for a small cowbell found lying near the bones.
Tylosaurus
A tylosaurus is not a dinosaur. Mosasaurs are not close relatives to dinosaurs. In fact, they are closely related to a group of lizards known as Varinads. Two modern examples of Varinads lizards are the Nile monitor and the Komodo Dragon. Tylosaurus were among the largest of all mosasaurs. It has a maximum length of 14 meters or 46 feet. It also has 13 teeth.
Body of the Tylosaurus
The body that you can see here is not the complete body. Pieces of the tail are not there, and the ribs and chest are not there because they couldn’t attach it. Studying workers and volunteers spent more than 2,000 hours recovering the bones.
Artemis
This Artemis fossil was found 90 percent whole. This is very rare. Mosasaurs are extinct aquatic reptiles, related to modern monitor lizards and Gila monsters. Mosasaurs were well-adapted to living in the warm, shallow seas that covered much of North America, including Alabama during the late cretaceous period. Like, modern whales, mosasaurus breathed air and were powerful swimmers.
Clidastes
In life, clidastes smallest in the mosasaur family, grew to about 12-15 feet. All of the bones were found at the same time and were a part of the same animal. The teeth and the small hole in the top of the skull is how he breathed air while swimming. In total this animal has 17 teeth.
More Information
Mosasaur (family Mosasauridae), extinct aquatic lizards that attained a high degree of adaptation to the marine environment and were distributed worldwide during the Cretaceous Period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago). The mosasaurs competed with other marine reptiles—the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs—for food, which consisted largely of ammonoids, fish, and cuttlefish. Many mosasaurs of the Late Cretaceous were large, exceeding 9 metres (30 feet) in length, but the most common forms were no larger than modern porpoises.
Mosasaurs had snakelike bodies with large skulls and long snouts. Their limbs were modified into paddles having shorter limb bones and more numerous finger and toe bones than those of their ancestors. The tail region of the body was long, and its end was slightly downcurved in a manner similar to that of the early ichthyosaurs. The backbone consisted of more than 100 vertebrae. The structure of the skull was very similar to that of the modern monitor lizards, to which mosasaurs are related. The jaws bore many conical, slightly recurved teeth set in individual sockets. The jawbones are notable in that they were jointed near mid-length (as in some of the advanced monitors) and connected in front by ligaments only. This arrangement enabled the animals not only to open the mouth by lowering the mandible but also to extend the lower jaws sideways while feeding on large prey.
Source: https://www.britannica.com/animal/mosasaur
About Alabama Museum of Natural History Beacons
This physical web project was originally developed by students at Brookwood Middle School in conjunction with the Alabama Museum of Natural History. This partnership allowed BMS students to get real world experience in web design, research, and project development.