Mosasaur Fossils

Mosasaurs were marine reptiles that dominated the oceans of the Late Cretaceous Period, approximately 98-66 million years ago. They are, in fact, a variety of lizard that had become completely adapted to marine life, and are most closely related to monitor lizards. The majority of mosasaurs were the apex predators of their environment, with most of them possessing flesh-ripping teeth, while others had teeth adapted for crunching open shelled mollusks. The largest known mosasaurs are estimated at over 40 ft. long, though some estimates have put particular species as being even larger. The first documented specimen of a mosasaur fossil was in the town of Maastricht, Netherlands in 1764, in which a partial skull was discovered by limestone quarry-workers along the Meuse River. For years it was undecided as to exactly what kind of animal the fossils belonged to, though in 1799 the Dutch mathematician and physicist Adrian Gilles Camper recognized its reptilian affinities. In 1822, English paleontologist and geologist William Conybeare named the creature Mosasaurus, meaning "Meuse Lizard" (after the Meuse River, near where the original fossils were discovered).