Webosaurs Blog

Calamari anyone?

Hey gang, our Weekly Dino Fact comes to us today via Spyro008. Spy featured some information on her blog about the amazing (and scary!) Mosasaur, so by request we’re going to have a Mosasaur post as well. If you’d like to see Spy’s Daily Dino Fact you can check it out here.

Mosasaur might look kind of like a fish, but it’s actually a lizard. In fact, Mosasaur means ‘River Lizard’ in Latin and were closely related to snakes. They were incredibly hardy and were the dominant marine predators during the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous AFTER super aquatic predators Ichthyosaurus and Pliosaurs became extinct. As Spy’s blog shows, Mosasaurs had a body shape very similar to that of modern day monitor lizards, only a lot bigger and much more frightening.

"Mosasaurs? Ya we're related, what's it to ya?"

How much bigger were Mosasaurs than Monitor Lizards? A lot bigger, a Monitor lizard might be about 1 meter long and Mosasaurs could get to be as big as 17.5 meters long. That’s HUGE, you definitely want to get out of the pool when Mosasaur is swimming laps! Another cool fact about Mosasaurs is that they had a double-hinged jaw and flexible skull, a lot like a snakes, this enabled them to eat their prey almost whole. Underwater. Yeah. Mosasaurs truly were THE underwater predator of the late Cretaceous, thanks again to Spy for featuring this amazing beast. What do you think about Mosasaurs? What super-interesting dinos would you like to see featured on the blog soon? Leave your comments and maybe I’ll write about your dino next week! WoOt!

-Mio

Tags: Monitor Lizards, Mosasaurs, Scary Dinos, Swimming Laps