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New Freshwater Mosasaur Species Found in France
Developing
In Short: Fossils of a previously unknown, freshwater-dwelling mosasaur have been identified in southeastern France.
Paleontologists from France’s National Museum of Natural History have discovered fossils of a new species of mosasaur, Garamaudo bauciensis, in the city of Bouc-Bel-Air, Provence.
The fossils, found in 1997, belong to a roughly 2.5-meter-long tethysaurine mosasaur that lived in a freshwater lake, not the sea.
Lead author Dr. Nathalie Bardet and her colleagues noted that mosasauroidea, an extinct group of aquatic squamates, invaded and diversified in aquatic environments during the Cenomanian period, spreading worldwide until the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
The Bouc-Bel-Air – Sousquières locality, where the fossils were found, represents a freshwater ecosystem, likely a moderately eutrophic, carbonate-producing lake periodically influenced by flooding and shallowing events.
Unlike better-known mosasaurs, Garamaudo bauciensis retained limbs suited for walking on land and a pelvis firmly attached to the spine, indicating a more primitive form.
This discovery highlights the diversity of mosasaurs and suggests that freshwater forms evolved within the Tethysaurinae clade, contributing to a more complex understanding of mosasaur evolution and niche partitioning.
What's still developing
- “The assignment of this new freshwater mosasaurid to the tethysaurines highlights an additional occurrence of a freshwater species in this clade and the fact that, based on current knowledge, it is only within the Tethysaurinae that freshwater forms evolved among mosasaurids,” the scientists said.
- “Such rapid flooding episodes could explain the state of preservation of the holotype specimen of Garamaudo bauciensis, which includes broken bones having however well-preserved surfaces.” Garamaudo bauciensis was about 2.5 m long and, unlike the better-known mosasaurs, kept limbs that look suited to walking on land, along with a pelvis firmly attached to the spine.
Sources
- Sci.Newslink