Mighty Mosasaur Pocket Fossil
Mighty Mosasaur Pocket Fossil
The Mighty Mosasaur Pocket Fossil is a dinosaur-age specimen you can take on the go! Within this box, you'll find an all-in-one scientific collection, featuring a fossilized Mosasaur tooth, an informational authenticity card, and a beautiful illustration of the aquatic reptile!
Please note: All fossil teeth will show some sign of repair. This specimen cannot be returned or exchanged.
The Mighty Mosasaur Pocket Fossil box includes:
- One Fossil Mosasaur Tooth (~1cm)
- One Folding Information & Illustration Card
- One black charm box for safekeeping
The Pocket Fossil and Folding Card in hand!
MIGHTY MOSASAUR POCKET FOSSIL
Millions of years ago, the mighty Mosasaur swam through the Cretaceous seas, a real-life sea monster that dominated the food chain. These aquatic lizards could grow up to 56 feet from head to tail, with dozens of sharp teeth between their jaws.
Mosasaur teeth were conical and perfect for catching fish. The reptiles shed them quite often and were always growing replacements.
This specimen is one of these pocket-sized fossil teeth from a 66,000,000-year-old Mosasaur!
The Mighty Mosasaur Pocket Fossil is a display box that contains a small, ~1cm fossil tooth, a folding informational card about the Mosasaur, authenticity details, and a beautiful illustration of the prehistoric creature!
We wanted to put the most bang for your buck into this specimen. It's an all-in-one package that makes a great gift for kids, students, office parties, or just about anyone who loves learning about extinct creatures and dinosaurs!
The tooth and folding card both fit snugly in the black 1 3/4" x 1 1/8" x 5/8" charm box, so it truly is a Pocket Fossil!
TEMPORAL RANGE: 92,000,000 to 66,000,000 years ago
MORE ABOUT MOSASAURS
"The mosasaur [...] was uniquely specialized to anchor large-sized teeth within powerful jaws..." ~ Min Liu, "Varanoid Tooth Eruption and Implantation Modes in a Late Cretaceous Mosasaur." (2016)
If we look first to the sea, the Mesozoic Era might not be known as the Age of Dinosaurs, but rather as the Age of Marine Reptiles. Beginning with the appearance of the dolphin-shaped Ichthyosaurs in the Triassic Period, the rising seas of the Jurassic Period gave way to a wider variety of large predators including the long-necked Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs to the powerful Mosasaurs.
Since the first Mosasaur skull was discovered in 1764, our knowledge of this large family of marine reptiles has come primarily from skeletal remains. Mosasaurs ranged in size from 1.1m (3.3ft) to 17.4m (57 ft). Their skulls were flexible and their jaws are double-hinged. While this arrangement probably allowed a Mosasaur to swallow prey whole, the alignment of a Mosasaur's teeth with "bony crypts" to protect emerging teeth also suggests Mosasaurs likely crushed bones as frequently as they tore into flesh.
📸 ABOVE: A complete skeleton of Tylosaurus dyspelor, a large species of Mosasaur (1899).
📸 Mosasaur Teeth in a Fossilized Jaw
The Shape of a Predator
Once thought to be almost crocodile-like in appearance or even related directly to snakes, recent studies have revised our understanding of Mosasaurs giving way to a picture of a streamlined predator well-suited to dominating its environment.
While this evidence alone suggests the Mosasaurs were formidable predators, a spectacular new find in Jordan has revealed that Mosasaurs were "countershaded" with darker pigmentation on the top and lighter on the bottom. Similar soft tissue impressions show that Mosasaurs have tail flukes and true flippers. This new information suggests this already formidable predator could swim much faster, a truly terrifying presence backed long history in the fossil record.
📸 A modern recreation of the Mosasaur
Further Reading
Cope, Edward Drinker. "Lamarek Versus Weismann." Nature 41 (1889): 79.
Cope, Edward Drinker. The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution. Open Court, 1904.
Everhart, Michael J. Oceans of Kansas. Indiana University Press, 2005.
Lindgren, Johan, et al. "Convergent Evolution in Aquatic Tetrapods: Insights from an Exceptional Fossil Mosasaur." PLoS One 5.8 (2010): e11998.
Lindgren, Johan, et al. "Skin Pigmentation Provides Evidence of Convergent Melanism in Extinct Marine Reptiles." Nature (2014).
Liu, Min, et al. "Varanoid Tooth Eruption and Implantation Modes in a Late Cretaceous Mosasaur." Frontiers in Physiology 7 (2016).
