When did mososaurs live?
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Mosasaurs (from Latin "Mosa" meaning the 'Meuse river', and Greek σαύρος "sauros" meaning 'lizard') are an extinct group of large marine reptiles containing 38 genera in total. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Early Cretaceous. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian-Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.
Mosasaur
30370167#11
From May 1973 to September 1974, Abdelghani Bousta lived in hiding. During this time, he realised the mistakes made when the March 1973 events were organised. In 1975, he wrote a critical analysis of UNFP on behalf of the Option Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary option) movement, harshly criticising the events and the leaders: “[…] the March 1973 events helped shed light on the internal contradictions of the Party and show the true nature of its leaders: putschist and adventurous leaders who did not see any problem in sacrificing dozens of activists in a hazardous battle.”
Abdelghani Bousta
14046416#2
This enzyme belongs to the family of oxidoreductases, specifically those acting on paired donors, with O2 as oxidant and incorporation or reduction of oxygen. The oxygen incorporated need not be derived from O2 with 2-oxoglutarate as one donor, and incorporation of one atom o oxygen into each donor. The systematic name of this enzyme class is N6,N6,N6-trimethyl-L-lysine,2-oxoglutarate:oxygen oxidoreductase (3-hydroxylating). Other names in common use include trimethyllysine alpha-ketoglutarate dioxygenase, TML-alpha-ketoglutarate dioxygenase, TML hydroxylase, 6-N,6-N,6-N-trimethyl-L-lysine,2-oxoglutarate:oxygen oxidoreductase, and (3-hydroxylating). This enzyme participates in lysine degradation and L-carnitine biosynthesis and requires the presence of iron and ascorbate.
Trimethyllysine dioxygenase
34821871#2
Puncture marks made by teeth on several "Eutrephoceras" fossils (such as "E. campbelli", of the Trent River Formation in Vancouver) are cited as evidence of mososaur predation on this genus.
Eutrephoceras
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Vassallo died on 29 March 1868 and is buried in the Carmelite church in Valletta.
Ġan Anton Vassallo
48718652#0
This timeline of mosasaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, and taxonomic revisions of mosasaurs, a group of giant marine lizards that lived during the Late Cretaceous Epoch. Although mosasaurs went extinct millions of years before humans evolved, humans have coexisted with mosasaur fossils for millennia. Before the development of paleontology as a formal science, these remains would have been interpreted through a mythological lens. Myths about warfare between serpentine water monsters and aerial thunderbirds told by the Native Americans of the modern western United States may have been influenced by observations of mosasaur fossils and their co-occurrence with creatures like "Pteranodon" and "Hesperornis".
Timeline of mosasaur research
1203012#0
Mesosaurs ("middle lizards") were a group of small aquatic reptiles that lived during the early Permian period, roughly 299 to 270 million years ago. Mesosaurs were the first known aquatic reptiles, having apparently returned to an aquatic lifestyle from more terrestrial ancestors. However, just how terrestrial mesosaur ancestors had become remains uncertain; recent research cannot establish with confidence if the first amniotes were fully terrestrial, or only amphibious. Most authors consider mesosaurs to have been aquatic, although adult animals may have been amphibious, rather than completely aquatic, as indicated by their moderate skeletal adaptations to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Similarly, their affinities are uncertain; they may be either the most basal sauropsids, or among the most basal parareptiles.
Mesosaur
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Platecarpus ("flat wrist") is an extinct genus of aquatic lizards belonging to the mosasaur family, living around 84–81 million years ago during the middle Santonian to early Campanian, of the Late Cretaceous period. Fossils have been found in the United States and a possible specimen in Belgium and Africa. A well-preserved specimen of "Platecarpus" shows that it fed on moderate-sized fish, and it has been hypothesized to have fed on squid, and ammonites as well. Like other mosasaurs, it was initially thought to have swum in an eel-like fashion, although another study suggests that it swam more like modern sharks. An exceptionally well-preserved specimen of "P. tympaniticus" known as LACM 128319 shows skin impressions, pigments around the nostrils, bronchial tubes, and the presence of a high-profile tail fluke, showing that it and other mosasaurs did not necessarily have an eel-like swimming method, but were more powerful, fast swimmers. It is held in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Platecarpus
4864603#10
The Morrison Formation is a sequence of shallow marine and alluvial sediments which, according to radiometric dating, ranges between 156.3 million years old (Ma) at its base, to 146.8 million years old at the top, which places it in the late Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian, and early Tithonian stages of the Late Jurassic period. This formation is interpreted as a semiarid environment with distinct wet and dry seasons. The Morrison Basin where dinosaurs lived, stretched from New Mexico to Alberta and Saskatchewan, and was formed when the precursors to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains started pushing up to the west. The deposits from their east-facing drainage basins were carried by streams and rivers and deposited in swampy lowlands, lakes, river channels and floodplains. This formation is similar in age to the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Germany and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. In 1877 this formation became the center of the Bone Wars, a fossil-collecting rivalry between early paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.
Marshosaurus
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The presence of young mosasaurs in the formation suggests that mosasaurs were viviparous and gave birth hundreds of miles out to sea, as Niobrara was in the middle of the Western Interior Seaway at the time. Juveniles would have been vulnerable to predation by the many large mid-ocean predators, so it is likely that mosasaurs lived in groups rather than solitarily. Also, viviparous species tend to have much fewer offspring than egg-laying ones, so if there were few young that were born, they were most likely to have sought protection within groups in order to reach adulthood and thereby maintain the population of mosasaurs.
Paleobiota of the Niobrara Formation
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Suchomimus (meaning "crocodile mimic") is a genus of spinosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived between 125 to 112 million years ago in what is now Niger, during the Aptian to early Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous Period. The animal was named and described by Paul Sereno and colleagues, based on a partial skeleton from the Erlhaz Formation. Its long and shallow skull, similar to that of a crocodile, earns it its genus name, while the species Suchomimus tenerensis alludes to the locality of its first remains, the Ténéré Desert. Some palaeontologists consider the animal to be an African species of the European spinosaurid "Baryonyx", "B. tenerensis". "Suchomimus" might also be a junior synonym of the contemporaneous spinosaurid "Cristatusaurus lapparenti", although the latter taxon is based on much more fragmentary remains.
Suchomimus