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Recently in Morocco, what was undoubtedly one of the most important predators of the Cretaceous has come to light: the Thalassotitan atrox, a mixture of a Komodo dragon, a great white shark, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a giant killer whale. A worthy character from Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Nathalie Bardet, director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), is part of the team that found the fossil.
The paleontologist Nathalie Bardet, president of the APF, the French Paleontological Association, knows well the Thalassotitan atrox, a new species of mosasaur, after several years of excavations in Morocco, studies and analysis.
“You have to imagine the earth tens of millions of years ago, when the dominant beings were large animals or frightening-looking birds. It is around 67 million years ago that the Thalassotitan atrox appears, a name that comes from three Greek roots: Thalasso ( sea), Titan (giant), Atrox (terrifying). The reptile was found in the area of phosphate fossils in Morocco, an exceptional place where hundreds of skeletons of these beings are located,” he highlights.
The Thalassotitan atrox “was a very large animal, it measured about 10 to 12 meters long, its skull is one meter and forty, very robust, with large teeth. From all this it can be deduced that it was an animal that was the head of the chain of all the animals that lived then”.
a great predator
It is a large predator “that scared the rest of the animals because it fed on everything that lived under it, that is, other marine reptiles, other smaller mosasaurs, very large fish. We have found remains with acid, which which means that digestion could not be done, only Thalassotitan could do it”, observes the paleontologist.
The Thalassotitan atrox belongs to the group of organisms called mosasaurs: a gigantic reptile capable of challenging other rivals that are equally or more imposing. The reptile lived during the Cretaceous period. According to the studies of the team to which Nathalie Bardet belongs, we know that it was a period of great biodiversity.
“Mosasaurs were all lizards. You have to imagine a Komodo dragon-type lizard, but you expand it 40 feet, you put fins on it instead of legs, you put it in the sea. And here you have the bug. We’ve compared it to today’s giant killer whales because they are also very robust marine mammals, with thick, short skulls and very large teeth. Mosasaurs lived only in the Cretaceous period, and then into the Late Cretaceous. During their ‘short-lived’ -30 million years – have developed with great diversity: numerous species, numerous types that occupied all the niches that existed then in the marine world. And they shared it with the sharks, which were also very active. In the phosphates of Morocco there is also an exceptional quantity of sharks”, details the scientist.
Reconstruction and representation
“What we normally find are bones, teeth, claws. They are complete remains, the animal can be reconstructed. In this case we could deduce why we had a skeleton that measures 10 meters, the fins, the rest. Then comes the skin, and in some In some cases, scales have been preserved. And now there are new generation scientific methods, it is biochemistry, which allows you to deduce whether the tissue and the colors are well preserved. So paleo art, reconstruction in vivo, is like science, it is improving “, remembers Nathalie Bardet.
We asked the guest of Escala in Paris why the exploration work in Morocco is so important, and if other neighboring countries could be just as relevant for this type of paleontological discoveries.
Morocco, an open book of paleontology
Nathalie Bardet explains that, of all the Maghreb countries, Morocco has three great advantages: “It is a super industrial exploitation. What does this mean? It allows us to dig in fantastic conditions; we have huge surfaces to dig, all kinds of equipment and people to help. The second is that the phosphate sediments preserve the remains very well, exceptionally. And the third, the most important, is that in Morocco the sedimentary series of phosphates is complete. It goes from the Cretaceous – around 70 million of years -, until the Eocene, that is to say 45 million years. They are like layers of a cake”.
There are also phosphates in other countries, such as in the Middle and Near East, throughout North Africa, West Africa, and even in the Pernambuco region of Brazil. “But only in Morocco do you have both the Cretaceous and the Tertiary. It means that you can study the evolution of the paleobiosphere for 25 million years. It’s like an open book. In the other sites like Jordan and Syria where I I have excavated is only the Cretaceous, we don’t have the whole chain”.
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