🌊 Marine reptilesCretaceousIconic

Mosasaurus

Mosasaurus hoffmannii

The Maastricht fossil contributed to the understanding that species can become extinct and that Earth has a deep prehistory.

Image: Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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Characteristics

Scientific name: Mosasaurus hoffmannii
Period: Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian)
Lived: 72–66 Ma (72 million years ago)
Diet: Carnivore
Habitat: Open sea
Length (estimate): 12 m
Mass (estimate): 10,000 kg
Discovered/described: 1766 · Stonecutters from Maastricht; the fossil was later scientifically described

Description

Mosasaurus was a large marine lizard with a long body, powerful tail fluke and limbs modified into paddles. Its jaws bore serrated teeth and could seize a wide range of marine animals. Its tail probably provided the main propulsion, while the forelimbs and hindlimbs steered. The Maastricht find was first interpreted as a crocodile-like animal and later took a central place in palaeontology.

Habitat

Warm, open Cretaceous seas in what is now north-western Europe.

Fossil sites

Mount Saint Peter, Maastricht
Maastricht Limestone
Cultural profile: The Netherlands →

Famous finds

Iconic fossil
The 'Great Animal of Maastricht'
Mosasaurus · MNHN AC 9648
Found in 1778 by quarry workers in the Sint-Pietersberg
Sint-Pietersberg, Maastricht
Museum: Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris
This enormous skull from a chalk quarry near Maastricht was first thought to belong to a crocodile or a whale. After the siege of Maastricht in 1794, French revolutionaries took the fossil to Paris, where Georges Cuvier showed that it was an extinct giant lizard. In 1822 the animal was named Mosasaurus, after the river Meuse.
Mosasaurus →
Image: Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond and diverse draughtsmen and engravers · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Wikipedia: Mosasaurus

Contemporaries in the database

Sources: Mosasaurus

Description

Habitat

Warm, open Cretaceous seas in what is now north-western Europe.

Famous finds

Iconic fossil

The 'Great Animal of Maastricht'

Mosasaurus · MNHN AC 9648

Found in 1778 by quarry workers in the Sint-Pietersberg

Sint-Pietersberg, Maastricht

Museum: Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris

This enormous skull from a chalk quarry near Maastricht was first thought to belong to a crocodile or a whale. After the siege of Maastricht in 1794, French revolutionaries took the fossil to Paris, where Georges Cuvier showed that it was an extinct giant lizard. In 1822 the animal was named Mosasaurus, after the river Meuse.

Mosasaurus →

Image: Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond and diverse draughtsmen and engravers · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Wikipedia: Mosasaurus