5 March 2024, 16:40 | Updated: 5 March 2024, 17:18
Picture:
(Andrey Atuchin/University of Bath)
By Jasmine Moody
A “nightmarish” sea lizard has been found by scientists that might have dominated the oceans 66 million years in the past.
Khinjaria acuta would have lived alongside land-based dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Scientists found the fossil at an uncovered phosphate mine within the southeast of Casablanca, Morocco.
The sea lizard would have measured between seven and eight metres, an identical measurement to an orca.
As properly as its size, the Khinjaria had robust jaws with an array of dagger-like tooth to clamp down on prey, and an elongated cranium and jaw muscle construction, suggesting it had “a horrible biting power”.
These options would have given the creature a “nightmarish look”, in response to researchers.
The sea lizard belongs to the mosasaurs, a household of large marine lizards, that are the ancestors of the modern-day Komodo dragon and anaconda.
According to scientists, these marine creatures had been apex predators, creatures on the prime of the meals chain, and swam alongside different mosasaurs akin to “saw-toothed” Xenodens and “star-toothed” Stelladen.
Picture:
Andrey Atuchin/University of Bath
The area’s heat currents and nutrient-dense waters may have offered meals for giant numbers of marine wildlife, supporting many apex predators akin to Khinjaria.
Dr Nick Longrich, from the Department of Life Sciences and the Milner Centre for Evolution on the University of Bath, who led the examine, mentioned: “What’s outstanding right here is the sheer variety of prime predators.
“We have a number of species rising bigger than an awesome white shark, they usually’re prime predators, however all of them have totally different tooth, suggesting they’re searching in several methods.
“Some mosasaurs had tooth to pierce prey, others to chop, tear, or crush. Now we’ve Khinjaria, with a brief face full of big, dagger-shaped tooth.
“This is likely one of the most numerous marine faunas seen anyplace, at any time in historical past, and it existed simply earlier than the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs went extinct,” he added.
Picture:
Alamy
The examine, printed within the journal Cretaceous Research, relies on cranium and skeletal evaluation of the creature’s stays.
Mosasaurs grew to become extinct across the identical time because the dinosaurs, in an occasion regarded as associated to the aftermath of an asteroid influence within the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
When these predators disappeared, whales and seals then dominated the oceans, whereas swordfish and tuna began to seem, in response to researchers.
There are just a few giant apex predators in fashionable marine meals chains, akin to orcas, white sharks and leopard seals.
Dr Longrich commented on how a lot the ecosystem has modified since prehistoric occasions.
He mentioned: “There appears to have been an enormous change within the ecosystem construction previously 66 million years.
“This unbelievable variety of prime predators within the Late Cretaceous is uncommon, and we don’t see that in fashionable marine communities.”
Dr Longrich added: “Whether there’s one thing about marine reptiles that precipitated the ecosystem to be totally different, or the prey, or maybe the setting, we don’t know.
“But this was an extremely harmful time to be a fish, a sea turtle, or perhaps a marine reptile.”
