Kingdom Metazoa
Phylum Chordata
Class Reptilia
Subclass Diapsida
Order Squamata
- Mosasaurid, indet.
- Plioplatecarpus?
- Tylosaurus
Diet:
- Fish & Reptiles
- Cephalopods
Habitat:
- Coastal and Shallow Marine
Material:
- Partial Skull & Skeleton
- Partial Skull
- Articulated Tail Vertebrae
- Isolated Limb Bones
Restricted to the Upper Cretaceous, the Mosasauridae were a small group of highly specialized and successful marine lizards; large, predaceous, and crocodile-like, whose closest relatives lie somewhere between the serpents and monitor lizards. They were long and slender animals, with a tail that was flattened and which served as the only propulsive organ, the limbs modified into paddles used for steering and stabilization. The skull does not show any specializations for deep diving, and is basically similar to that of modern monitor lizards, but with a well-developed, secondary joint midway along the length of the lower jaw, and with teeth emerging in two parallel rows from the roof of the mouth. In most genera, these teeth are large, sharp cones, set in sockets rather than fused to the margins of each jaw, in others they are capped with blunt crowns for crushing shelled mollusks such as the ammonoids. Unlike the elasmosaurids, the body and limb proportions vary greatly, which may have been associated with specializations of maneuverability and speed for a wide variety of prey. Material attributed to a number of different mosasaur genera has been recovered from several sites along the Puntledge River and from Maastrichtian marine deposits on the north coast of Hornby Island.
Images of the material will be added to this space when available.