Paleontologists Discover Extinct Species of Mosasaur with Uniquely Screwdriver-like Teeth.
The species Stelladens mysteriosus is twice the size of a dolphin.
According to a press release from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, the newly discovered species is named Stelladens mysteriosus, and it is twice the size of a dolphin. It features a unique arrangement of teeth with ridges resembling blades running along its length.
“Its strange, ridged teeth” are “unlike any known reptiles,” the university emphasized.
Mosasaur is a gigantic aquatic reptile from the Cretaceous period, well-known to scientists for hundreds of years. However, this is the first time an animal with such an unusual arrangement of teeth has been identified, according to the lead author of the study, Dr. Nick Longrich from the Milner Centre for Evolution.
Dr. Longrich explained that this creature “is unlike any mosasaur or any reptile, even any vertebrate we have seen before.”
The screwdriver-shaped teeth of the newly discovered species.
“Along with other recent discoveries from Africa, this creature suggests that mosasaurs and other marine reptiles evolved rapidly until 66 million years ago when they were wiped out by an asteroid along with the dinosaurs and about 90% of species on Earth,” the press release from the University of Bath noted.
Other experts have also expressed their astonishment at this discovery.
Dr. Nathalie Bardet, a marine reptile specialist at the Natural History Museum in Paris, France, stated she was both “confused and amazed” by this discovery.
“I have been studying mosasaurs in Morocco for over 20 years, but I have never seen anything like this,” she said.
