The Khinjaria acuta had dagger-like enamel that helped it hunt prey off the coast of Africa 66 million years in the past.
Andrey Atuchin/University of BathArtistic depiction of the Khinjaria acuta, the mosasaur that stalked the waters of the Late Cretaceous Period.
Researchers have uncovered the fossilized stays of a prehistoric big lizard in a phosphate mine close to Casablanca, Morocco.
Researchers imagine the creature was aquatic and prowled the waters off the African coast through the Late Cretaceous Period almost 66 million years in the past.
The Khinjaria Acuta And Its Habitat
While excavating the phosphate mine, researchers uncovered the cranium and components of the skeleton of what seemed to be a prehistoric sea monster. Noting the creature’s dagger-like enamel, researchers named it Khinjaria acuta, stemming from Khinjar, the Arabic phrase for “dagger,” and acuta, the Latin phrase for “sharp.”
According to the staff’s analysis, revealed within the journal Cretaceous Research, the reptile measured roughly 26 toes in size — in regards to the dimension of an orca — and had formidable jaws that may have allowed it to hunt giant prey.
“The elongation of the posterior part of the skull which accommodated the jaw musculature suggests a terrible biting force,” Nour-Eddine Jalil from the Museum National d’ Histoire Naturelle in Paris acknowledged within the University of Bath’s press launch in regards to the discovery.
University of BathThe fossilized stays of the Khinjaria acuta.
This creature, known as “nightmarish” by researchers, belonged to the Mosasauridae household, an extinct group of lizards whose descendants embrace Komodo dragons and anacondas.
Although the Khinjaria got here from a protracted line of comparable aquatic predators, the ocean monster’s distinct dagger-like enamel gave it a bonus within the waters of the Late Cretaceous interval.
“Some mosasaurs had teeth to pierce prey, others to cut, tear, or crush,” stated the lead research creator Dr. Nick Longrich of the University of Bath. “Now we have Khinjaria, with a short face full of huge, dagger-shaped teeth. This is one of the most diverse marine faunas seen anywhere, at any time in history, and it existed just before the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs went extinct.”
Life In The Late Cretaceous Period
According to the University of Bath’s press launch, the Khinjaria acuta would have competed fiercely for sources throughout its lifetime.
“What’s remarkable here is the sheer diversity of top predators,” stated Dr. Longrich. “We have multiple species growing larger than a great white shark, and they’re top predators, but they all have different teeth, suggesting they’re hunting in different ways.”
“There seems to have been a huge change in the ecosystem structure in the past 66 million years,” Longrich continued. “This incredible diversity of top predators in the Late Cretaceous is unusual, and we don’t see that in modern marine communities.”
Like different Late Cretaceous creatures just like the Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, the Khinjaria acuta finally disappeared on account of the asteroid that crashed into the Yucatán peninsula.
The extinction of the mosasaurs and different prehistoric sea monsters allowed creatures like whales, seals, and trendy fish to flourish. However, it posed an intriguing query about our planet’s oceans.
“Modern ecosystems have predators like baleen whales and dolphins that eat small prey, and not many things eating large prey,” Dr. Longrich acknowledged. “The Cretaceous has a huge number of marine reptile species that take large prey. Whether there’s something about marine reptiles that caused the ecosystem to be different, or the prey, or perhaps the environment, we don’t know. But this was an incredibly dangerous time to be a fish, a sea turtle, or even a marine reptile.”
After studying about Khinjaria acuta, uncover the story of Quetzalcoatlus, the biggest flying dinosaur ever discovered. Then, learn in regards to the mass extinction occasion that killed the dinosaurs.
