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Fossil pigments reveal a dark coloring of extinct marine reptiles. The leatherback turtle (top) and mosasaur (bottom) have a dark back and a clear belly, a camouflage pattern, and the ichthyosaur (center) is uniformly dark.
(Stefan Sølberg)
Popularized in the hit film "Jurassic World", the mosasaur came back to life after Kansas discovered a fossil of an 85 million year old baby.
A "Tylosaurus specimen of the size of a newborn" (a type of mosasaur) has been identified and examined. The researchers looked at the fractures, including the snout, the puzzle and the upper jaw.
"Despite its small size, a series of cranial characters diagnoses the FHSM VP-14845 [the fossil’s identification] as a species of Tylosaurus, including the elongated morphology of the basic phenoid ", reads in the summary of the study.
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The creature, which could reach 22 meters in adulthood, had a "skull length estimated at 30 [centimeters]", Says LiveScience, but was originally identified as a Platecarpus, a genus that can grow to nearly 20 feet in length.
Part dentigère of tylosaurine prylaxils. A-B, FHSM VP-14845, Tylosaurus sp. in A, dorsal and B, ventral views. C, TMM 40092-27, Tylosaurinae, in ventral view. The broken lines at A and B indicate the reconstructed contours of the element. C based on Polcyn et al. (2008 Polcyn, M.J., G. L. Bell Jr., K. Shimada, and J. Everhart, 2008. (Takuya Konishi, Paulina Jiménez-Huidobro and Michael W. Caldwell)
The document was written in August 2017 and finally published online Thursday, determining that it is a good Tylosaurus.
Other mosasaur variants may be up to 50 feet long and weigh up to 30,000 pounds, and some call him "T. rex of the seas ".
The study's lead researcher, Takuya Konishi, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, was able to determine that the fossil was a mosasaur, after examining its long snout and sharp teeth, a characteristic similar to orcas. modern, according to LiveScience.
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"In a somewhat unexpected way, the two pairs of premaxillary teeth protrude anteriorly and laterally to the base, implying an atypical procumbent nature of tylosaurines," reads in the study. "Also unusual are the first and second premaxillary teeth close together, where the second pair is also located posterolateral to the first pair."
Unlike dinosaurs, which laid eggs, mosasaurs gave birth to young children. The size of this newborn, who would have probably measured about 7 feet, suggests that he has not lived long, Konishi said, according to LiveScience.
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"I think this came out and that one way or another, miraculously, it was preserved and then discovered," Konishi said.
Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
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