Mosasaurs in Real Life

Since the Mosasaurs had a sharklike (but reversed) tail it stands to reason that they had some sort of a back fin as well for stabilization. The Ichthyosaurs had a similar tail design and also had the need of a back fin (and also had four other limbs) Since the back fin was evidently NOT a high obvious triangular fin such as Ichthyosaurs and sharks have, a long low fin (centered on the area of the shoulder perhaps) would be the most logical alternative arrangement.

And since there were several very distinct kinds of Mosasaurs, there is no reason to insist that no evidence for a back fin in any one of the known species or genera precludes the possibility of any of the others from ever having a back fin.

Ancient ocean predators were reptiles that swam like sharks

   

Nidhi Subbaraman NBC News

               

Sep. 10, 2013 at 11:00 AM ET

Johan Lindgren

A 70-million-year old fossil of a young mosasaur indicates that the marine reptiles had a forked tail like today's sharks.

The leviathans of the Late Cretaceous ocean were swift-swimming lizards, large as sperm whales and finned like sharks. New evidence shows how similar the flippers of these top predators from 90 million years ago were to the limbs of everyone's favorite predatory fish today.
The first mosasaur fossil was discovered in the 1700s. From their run-on spines, researchers first guessed the animals were related to snakes, and later proposed that the ocean-swimming reptiles swam like fish. Rare soft-tissue preserved on the new prognathodon fossil, one member of the family of mosasaurs, shows a well-defined body plan and the trademark shark-like forked tail, supporting that theory.

Johan Lindgren

This fossil, collected from the Maastrichtian of Harrana site in Jordan in 2008, contains the first soft tissue evidence of the tail shape of the mosasaur.

"For more than 200 years there hasn't been a single specimen showing the outlines of the fins and most important, the tail fin," Johan Lindgren, a paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden, told NBC News. Lindgren is a member of the team that describes the fossil in the Sept. 10 issue of Nature Communications.

Stefan Sølberg

Mosasaurs could grow up to 50 feet in length, and were the top predators of the Late Cretaceous oceans.

The new fossil, only about 6 feet long and therefore a young 'un, adds to evidence that the mosasaurs, which started out as land-living reptiles, entered the water and changed their body plan over tens of millions of years.
"The proportions of its body are amazingly similar to those that we see in pelagic sharks," Lindgren said. He expects that other, later mosasaurs may have been "even more fish-like than this guy."
Remarkably, the mosasaurs, the Cambrian-age ichthyosaurs before them, and today's toothy sharks — all top ocean predators in their time — independently arrived at roughly the same, "drop-shaped" stream-lined body plan and a two pronged tail.
Unlike sharks, the spine of the mosasaurs curved downward into the lower lobe of the tail. This may have been designed to assist the reptilian swimmers come up to the surface for air, Lindgren said.

Johan Lindgren, Hani Kaddumi and Michael Polcyn are authors of "Soft tissue preservation in a fossil marine lizard with a bilobed tail fin" published in Nature Communications.

Gambo And Ambon, Another Point of View

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/04/dale-drinnon-gambo-and-ambon.html
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/06/re-gambo-and-ambon.html

I had earlier ventured an opinion that the Sea Serpent sightings by the Captain of the Ambon (Evidently also later aboard the Java) were of a smaller and distinct form of Bernard Heuvelmans' Marine saurian and were the same as the creature which represented by the carcass of "Gambo" on the Atlantic side of Africa. To quote the original article:

This is another case where I had added different information to the Wikipedia article, which was subsequently removed. In this case I was not arguing for the identity of the carcass but drawing attention to the fact that the description was indeed close to two reports listed by Heuvelmans as possible 'Marine saurians' but off the coast of EAST Africa, at the end of the Red Sea.

These reports were sent along by the same Nederlandisch sea captain and both compared to a 'Smooth caiman.' The captain's own report was listed under the ship's name Ambon and the report dated to 22 October 1904. At the time, J. Vollewens was Third Officer and the Captain was G. A. Zeilanga. Vollewens later sent a report to A. C. Oudemans and he said then the head was raised above water for a little more than half a minute, was black above and white below. The head was raised about eight feet out of the water and both jaws were lined with many sharp-pointed teeth about 4 inches long. A fin was momentarily seen behind the head and could have been either a dorsal or a pectoral fin. The diameter of the neck where it met the water was about 2 1/2 feet. It was surrounded by several smaller animals like young sharks, probably travelling along with it to catch scraps. [Or else possibly the animal was feeding on the sharks]

A similar creature was sighted by the Java off Somaliland in 1906 and Vollewens also reported that one to Oudemans. (In The wake of the Sea-Serpents, pages 374-376)

Heuvelmans states in the text that it is probably an odd odontocete but that it could never be a type of beaked whale because of the many teeth in the jaws. However, in the tables in the back of the book, these reports are treated as Marine Saurians and they are so indicated on his map.

It would seem that the Ambon Sea Serpent was slightly larger than Gambo, possibly 20-25 feet long; and all speculations that this type of animal would be any sort of cetacean or crocodile would be mistaken. It is more likely a smaller form of the regular Marine Saurians, but there is no telling whether it would be the younger size of the same species or possibly a dwarfed variety. The colouring is also unlike the usual Marine Saurians. It cannot be a crocodile because the skin is smooth and it cannot be a cetacean because it has hind feet.
I include a map to indicate the carcass and the sightings. I also indicate (tenatively) that there might have been another corpse of this type found off Puerto Rico in 1964 according to information in Ivan Sanderson's files.

The sequel article was a presentation of the theory that the Gambo + Ambon creature was a small kind of short-necked plesiosaur, the opinion of Tyler Stone. And subsequently again Jay Cooney questioned that theory again and said that the short-necked Plesiosaur theory was not likely and that one or the other of the earlier theories was more likely correct.

Leaving that part aside for now, Jay also sent me the banner at the top of the page comparing the Ambon creature to a Mosasaur and suggesting it was merely a small but conventional Marine Saurian. I thought that was a possibly valid idea and asked to run the comparison on this blog.

BTW, two later amendments to the original article were that the term "Nederlandisch" was decidedly old-fashioned and liable to raise a few eyebrows these days, and that the Puerto Rico 1964 carcass was also possibly a small cetacean.

Mosasaurs From Beyond the Grave by Scott Mardis

(Compiled and edited by Scott Mardis) " The sea saurians of the secondary periods of geology have been replaced in the tertiary and actual seas by marine mammals. No remains of Cetacea have been found in lias or oolite, and no remains of Plesiosaur, or Ichthyosaur, or any other secondary reptile, have been found in Eocene or later tertiary deposits, or recent, on the actual sea-shores; and that the old air-breathing saurians floated when they died has been shown in the Geological Transactions ( vol. V., second series, pg. 512 ). The inference that may be reasonably drawn from no recent carcase or fragment of such having ever been discovered, is strengthened by the corresponding absence of any trace of their remains in the tertiary beds."- Richard Owen, The Times (London), Nov. 11, 1848

 

BULLETIN OF THE PEABODY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY NUMBER 23

Systematics and Morphology of American Mosasaurs

Dale A. Russell

(Originally Published 6 November 1967) pp.178-179

 Elliptonodon compressus Emmons 1858 nomen dubium

Elliptonodon compressus Emmons, 1858, p. 222, figs. 41-42.

TYPE. In Museum of Williams College, from ". . . the miocene near the Cape Fear River, in Bladen county (North Carolina)," (Emmons, 1858, p. 223).

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES. Emmons, 1860, p. 208, fig. 180(2), (5). Cope, 1869b, p. 263;

1869-1870, p. 186. Gilmore, 1928, p. 87. McDowell and Bogert, 1954, p. 152. DISCUSSION. Type and only specimen is a symmetrically bicarinate, somewhat inflated
and gently posteriorly recurved tooth that looks mosasaurian and resembles most
closely teeth of Prognathodon. It differs from any species of this genus however in that
the enamel surface of the tooth is strongly vertically striated. The name Elliptonodon
compressus must be regarded as a nomen dubium due to the incompleteness of the type

and the uncertainty regarding the original horizon of the reworked tooth.

Gilmore (1926, p. 192, pl. 72 figs. 1-2) described and figured a large fragment of a mosasaur dentary from the Coon Creek Formation of McNairy County, Tennessee, mentioning that the teeth were similar to that of Elliptonodon compressus. The dentary probably belongs to
Prognathodon, and its dorsally concave alveolar border resembles that of P. solvayi more closely than the more nearly straight border of P. overtoni.

Holcodus acutidens Gibbes 1851 nomen vanum

Holcodus columbiensis Gibbes, 1850, p. 77 nomen nudum.

Holcodus acutidens Gibbes, 1851, p. 9, pl. 3 figs. 6-9.

Mosasaurus acutidens, Marsh, 18i2b, p. 455.



LECTOTYPE. ANSP 8594, from the "Cretaceous of Alabama," (Gibbes, 1851, p. 9).

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES. Leidy, 1865a, pp. 32, 71, 118, 130, fig. 33, pl. I0 fig. 17.
Cope, 1869b, p. 265; 1869-1870, p. 21O; 1872d, p. 269; 1875, pp. 141, 270. Marsh, 1869,
p. 394. Merriam, 1894, p. 30. Williston, 1897d, p. 185; 1898b, p. 179. Gilmore, 1928, p. 87. McDowell and Bogert, 1954, p. 132.

DISCUSSION. Holcodus acutidens was originaIly proposed by Gibbes for three teeth, one from the Cretaceous of Alabama, a second from the Cretaceous of New Jersey, and a third from the Eocene of Orangeburg, South Carolina. The third tooth has not been located but if it was indeed from the Eocene it could not have been mosasaurian. The second tooth was identified as crocodilian by Leidy (1865a, p. 32), leaving the tooth from Alabama which Williston (1897d, p. 184) treated as a lectotype. This tooth is indistinguishabIe from those of Platecarpus, Ectenosaurus, or Plioplatecarpus and certainly is plioplatecarpine. Because of the inadequacy of the type material Holcodus acutidens must be considered a nomen vanum.

Mosasaurus carolinensis Gibbes 1851 nomen vanum

Mosasaurus caroliniensis Gibbes, 1850, p. 77 nomen nudum.

Mosasaurus carolinienensis Gibbes, 1851, p. 8, pl. 2 figs. 1-3.



TYPE. Specimen not located.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES. Leidy, 1860, p . 92; 1865a, p. 32. Cope, 1869b, p. 262; 1869-



1870, p. 193; 1875, p. 269.
DISCUSSION. The type is a mandibular fragment probably of a Mosasaurus. It is from
the Pliocene of Darlington, South Carolina, and was derived from the underlying
Cretaceous (Gibbes, 1851, p. 7).

"Recent mosasaur discoveries from New Jersey and Delaware, USA:stratigraphy, taphonomy and implications for mosasaur extinction", W.B. Gallagher, Netherlands Journal of Geosciences, 84 (3) (2005), pp-241-245

(Pg.244)- "The only mosasaurs that are stratigraphically higher occur in the Hornerstown Formation. The basal Hornerstown Formation has an abundantly fossiliferous horizon sometimes called the Main Fossiliferous Layer, or MFL for short. This bed produces mosasaur remains, but these are usually single isolated bones, often quite worn looking – some of the vertebrae from this layer are quite abraded, for example. So it has been argued that this material is reworked from underlying Cretaceous beds. But there are also mosasaur braincases and fresher-looking teeth as well from the MFL, although these are relatively more durable elements that would be more resistant to damage. A number of other Late Cretaceous fossils are found in this layer, including the shark Sqaulicorax, the teleost Enchodus, and

several genera of ammonites. There is some question over the age of this bed – is this a latest Maastrichtian deposit, or is it of early Paleocene age with some reworked Cretaceous fossils

in it? The MFL may be a time-averaged remanié deposit, with Cretaceous fossils accumulating under winnowed low sediment circumstances (Gallagher, 1993). An alternative hypothesis for the origin of this bed is that the MFL represents a lag deposit of Cretaceous fossils left in the wake of an impact tsunami, with subsequent input from Paleocene mortality."

 "Age and provenance of Cretaceous marine reptiles from the South Island and Chatham Islands, New Zealand", Graeme J. Wilson et. al, New Zealand Journal of Geology & Geophysics, 48(2005), pp. 377-387

 (Pg. 384)-Three samples from a block containing mosasaur bones were examined. Zfr 164a (L18959), from the underside of the block, contains a well-preserved diverse dinoflagellate assemblage of Lower Haumurian (S. haumuriense Zone) taxa plus a slightly less common component of Paleocene (Teurian) taxa belonging to the Palaeocystodinium golzowense Zone. The Lower Haumurian taxa include S. haumuriense (abundant), O. spinosa, O. porifera, I. cf. greenense, Nelsoniella semireticulata, N. aceras, Trichodinium cf. castanea, and V. spinulosa. The Teurian component includes Palaeoperidinium pyrophorum, Deflandrea foveolata, Cassidium fragile, Alisocysta cf. circumtabulata, and Cerodinium speciosum. In

the original description of S. haumuriense, Wilson (1984b) noted that the species occurred both at Haumuri Bluff and in the Takatika Grit of Chatham Island. Zfr164b (L18960) from near abone andZfr164c (L18961) from between bones yielded a similar mix of early Haumurian and Teurian
assemblages, although their diversities are less. These mixed Lower Haumurian and Teurian assemblages mirror almost exactly the assemblages described from elsewhere in the Takatika Grit (Wilson 1982b) and indicate that the Chatham's mosasaur was derived (together with
several of the palynomorphs) from Lower Haumurian and subsequently emplaced into Teurian sediments, or occurs as part of a lag deposit. The series of caudal vertebrae that comprise mosasaur specimen Zfr 164 are preserved in such a way as to suggest they have maintained their original life relationship to one another. Their in-line arrangement would seem to preclude their having been eroded from Cretaceous deposits and re-worked into Paleocene deposits. It seems more likely that they were buried in Cretaceous sediment, exhumed or partially exhumed in situ, before being re-buried in Paleocene sediment."

"Late Cretaceous marine reptiles (Elasmosauridae and Mosasauridae) of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand", Christopher P. Consoli and Jeffrey D. Stilwell, Cretaceous Research 30 (2009), pp.991–999

(Pg. 992)-"Marine reptile elements from the Takatika Grit, Chatham Islands have previously been mentioned but never formally described. This paper describes in detail a new marine reptile assemblage from the Chatham Islands. It is also one of the youngest marine reptile assemblages occurring close to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary from the high-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The time slice from the Campanian to the Danian (Late Cretaceous-early Paleogene) witnessed the submergence of a finger-like tract of land informally known as the Chatham Peninsula. The well-constrained New Zealand biostratigraphic record has resulted in a mid-Campanian to mid-Danian age range for the Takatika Grit due to its rich dinoflagellate assemblages, correlated to the zonation proposed for New Zealand by Crampton et al. (2000). The Takatika Grit comprises mainly mid-Campanian species typical of the Satyrodinium haumuriense Zone plus a slightly less conspicuous Lower Paleocene component (Palaeocystodinium golzowense Zone). This zonation was based on samples that were removed from matrix on and around an unidentified mosasaur from the nodular-phosphorite bone package (NPB).In addition to the Campanian and Danian palynomorphs, Wilson(1982) recorded New Zealand taxa characteristic of the Cretaceous-Paleogene(KPg)boundary. The palynomorphic data indicate that the phosphate nodules and fossils of the NPB are Late Cretaceous in age, but due to sedimentary starvation and reworking, Paleocene microfossil taxa are recorded. Mosasaurine mosasaurs and the elasmosaurid plesiosaurs were all found in the uppermost horizons of the nodular-phosphorite bone package (NPB) along Maunganui Beach, Chatham Island, New Zealand."

Old Australian Sea Dragon Report

This was just posted in Jay Cooney's blog for Bizzare Geology. He did not have an identity for the creature, but I did.

Japanese Sea Dragon

Note the forefins and "Exaggerated shape of the tail fin"

'Sea monster' spied in Australia

Home » Opinion

Mon, 27 May 2013

100 Years Ago

http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/100-years-ago/258613/sea-monster-spied-australia

 

Looking south over Anderson's Bay, Dunedin. - Otago Witness, 28.5.1913. Copies of picture available from ODT front office, lower Stuart St, or www.otagoimages.co.nz.

    

The Sydney correspondent of  the New Zealand Herald, writing of the recently-reported appearance of a strange marine monster, says: ''The sea serpent has at last turned up in Australian waters, and was seen, or at least some curious denizen of the deep was seen, disporting himself by scores of people aboard the inter-State liner Dimboola during the voyage of that vessel between Adelaide and Fremantle.'' ''The monster was seen by so many people at such close quarters that it is impossible to dismiss the story of its appearance as a mere sailor's yarn.''
All the newspapers have, of course, done full justice to the subject. One account telegraphed from Fremantle yesterday will suffice:''When the reports of the appearance of the monster were first made in Fremantle the captain and officers of the Dimboola were subjected to a good deal of chaff, but there can be no doubt that something unusual in the way of sea fish was sighted.
''On Wednesday morning last when the vessel was about latitude 35deg 29min south and longitude 134 east a shout from some of the passengers on deck caused the third officer, who was on watch, to look over the starboard quarter. He was amazed to see within a distance of less than a quarter of a mile a school of porpoises and a whale fleeing from a tremendously large sinuous monster.
''Captain Miller, master of the Dimboola, and the Marconi operator had their attention drawn to the sight, and they at once turned their glasses on the remarkable spectacle.
''Captain Miller says the serpent was at least 50ft long, was of the colour of a brown seal, and had a head between the size of a whale and a porpoise, and its tail was of the exaggerated fish variety. It alternately reared its head and ducked it under the waves.
''Presently the whole contingent of big fish was lost to view. Captain Miller has made a sketch of what he remembered of the sight, and he asked others of the passengers to do the same. It is remarkable how the sketches coincide. The serpent is revealed in much the same Chinese dragon form as we have been used to seeing it illustrated in other parts of the world.''
• The Clutha Free Press states that Mr Jas. Haggitt left Balclutha by Thursday morning's express en route for London, whence he is said to be proceeding to take possession of a considerable sum of money left him through the death of a relative. Mr Haggitt, who is a hard-working hardy old pioneer, takes his inseparable ''bluey'' with him, and he expressed his intention of taking it right to London. The friends of Mr Haggitt will be pleased to hear of his good fortune. He expects to arrive back in Balclutha about November.
- ODT, 27.5.1913.

In this case, this is evidently our Leviathan or Whale-swallower again, and in its regular expected range. Thank you Jay for this report, I shall be reprinting it. Although by now the creature's characteristics are well established, reports are rare enough that they are always of interest. This appears to be a really big mosasaur adapted to feeding on small whales, swallowing them whole, and is well-attested in folklore and legend. Being an enormous marine Dragon lizard, it is a true Sea Dragon, and those words are used regularly by Japanese ships when they encounter such a creature.These reports are notable because of the consternation the creature causes in schools of whales. and because of the size of the head of such creatures, in this case the head is between the size of that of a dilphin and that of a whale. That is a big head, although this is not an especially large creature of the type.

More on Mosasaur Sightings

http://kriis.com/Mosasaur/mosasaur.html

Message #5154 of 8203 from the Yahoo group Frontiers of Zoology:

Russian Antarctic Sea Serpents from Pravda
Posted by Dale Drinnon, January 9,2010  9:30 PM

There have been several reports of Sea Serpents in waters of the Southern Indian Ocean made by Russian whalers and exploratory vessels, and they are uniformlydescribed as snake-shaped, laterally-undulating and an overall light browncolor. They are supposed to be of very large size and they chase whales: thatwould mean about a hundred feet long and chasing small-to-medium-sized whales,in schools of about 30 individual whales. They are suspected in other areas such as East of Australia and around Tierra Del Fuego: and some accounts make them out to be the culprits chasing herds of small whales ashore to beach themselves en masse. I was looking for some good representative sightings on the internet but what I was turning up was clouded by some very bad speculation about the Sea Monsters driving the whales ashore by mental telepathy, by thinking bad thoughts at the whales. They are called Leviathans at one site and one of the other sources listed in the CFZ archives calls them "Sea Lions" but that source assumes they are like vastly enlarged  ordinary sea lions.At any rate, I think this is the same big-mosasaur that the U-Boat captains wereseeing aroundthe North Sea and Irish sea. Early reports of this type were listedin Ivan Sanderson's archivesat the SITU, but they were routine press clippingsreprinted from the Soviet sources such asPravda was then. The more interesting part is that they are big, snakelike, laterally-undulating creatures and their feeding behavoir had been observed. RARE observations also made byJapanese ships also confirm these observations. They are called Sea Dragons and JamesSweeney has an account in his book on Sea Monsters. Best Wishes, Dale D.

Item from Ivan Sanderson's files
#21. Off Soviet Research Station, Antarctica. "Sea serpent". 49' long. Light brown. Moved like
snake with "convulsive movements". Labelled a "sea snake".
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2011/05/peeking-at-ivans-situ-files-meaningless_31.html

A later Russian reference said that "a dozen" report of the same type in Antarctic waters were known,
 and there seem to be similar reports of creatures made in the cold waters North of Iceland and up to Spoitzbergen: there is however the pretty good counter-claim that such stories in the arctic are based
 on rotted corpses of big sharks and whales looking like "Dinosaurs" since the mention is made that
 some of them are "Furry"



Message #5017 of 8203 at the Yahoo Group Frontiers-of-Zoology

Patagonian Monsters, Additional
Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:49 am

Some of Austin Whittall's illustrations are quite interesting since they seem to
indicate a type of Patagonian crocodilian or caiman. I suppose this might be one
of the "Dragons" reported by early explorers. Needless to say it would be quite unusual to find
ordinary crocodilians in such a cold place. Are they describing the type of
Sea-Serpents Heuvelmans called Marine Saurians? Some of the illustrations show
rounded foreflipper-like "Wings" and perhaps they are meant to represent
Mosasaurs.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

From Dale Drinnon's Amended Cryptozoological Checklist:
Marine Saurian;
Heuvelmans created the category but did not make several important internal distinctions. There is the standard version which he describes as 40 to 60 feet long and which seems likely to be a mosasaur, but there are also reports of a larger form with a head characteristically 10 feet long or longer, and with a total length of 75 to 100 feet reported. This could be a different species, and also has different physiology and behavior, being a deeper-diver, more cold-tolerant and apparently at least sometimes a specialist predator on small whales. Russian whalers have evidently seen it chasing pods of smaller whales in Antarctic waters. I would include the one killed by the crew of the Monongahela in this category: I have subsequently found that this is also Shucker's opinion. Incidentally, the original version of the Monongahela report, verifiably in the captain's correct name and in his handwriting, is preserved in a New England shipping museum and differs from the version that Heuvelmans had access to.





Bakunawa

Bakunawa is the Phillipine version of the Taniwha and here it is represented as the cosmological dragon which swallows the sun during an eclipse, something which possibly relates the Southern Asian Rahu with the Hebrew Rahab (=Leviathan) at any rate the real creature that sightings are based on is the local type od whale-eater and likely to be a large mosasaur from the reports.

Scott Mardis' Mosasaur Links

Scott Mardis has put up some of his Mosasaur material for downloading through these links, for a limited time only.

4_mosasaur_lineupedited.jpg 146 KB 2011-05-endogenous-proteins-million-year-old-giant-marine.pdf 160 KB 4151907633_2f95ce1bb7_z.jpg 107 KB bunker03.jpg 36 KB Carinodens belgicus.jpg 28 KB ectenosaurus mosasaur skin.pdf 3 MB fossilized mosasaur turd.jpg 31 KB Freshwater Mosasaurs.pdf 9 MB mosasaur collagen platecarpus.pdf 5 MB mosasaur live birth.pdf 960 KB mosasaur skeleton.jpg 118 KB mosasaur skin illustration.jpg 109 KB mosasaur skin impressions.jpg 2 MB mosasaur skin plotosaurus.pdf 298 KB Mosasaur tongues.pdf 3 MB Mosasaur with tail fin.jpg 304 KB mosasaur.jpg 474 KB mosasaurs dale russell 1967.pdf 16 MB platecarpus skin.pdf 5 MB Sea Monster Tylosaurus Mosasaur Model 1.jpg 223 KB s-tylo2.jpg 38 KB Third20Mosasaur20Meeting20Abstracts20vol.pdf 1 MB

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