In the Netherlands, the skeleton of a 13-metre long mosasaur has been found, in a limestone quarry near Maastricht. Mosasaurs were marine reptiles that lived at the time of dinosaurs. Then, the area around Maastricht was covered by a shallow tropical sea.
Lower jaw details of the newly discovered mosasaur [Credit: ANP/Marcel van Hoorn]
Anne Schulp, a Palaeontologist at Maastricht’s Natural History Museum explained: “We see all the bones here scattered around and it is not like one complete skeleton. All the bones are over a very wide area and that is because the carcass ended up at the sea floor and then scavenging sharks came in, ripped the carcass apart and we have got the bones and all the little bits and pieces pretty much everywhere. So it is a bit of a jungle.”
The findings so far suggest they belonged to the oldest known specimen of the ‘Mosasaurus Hoffmanni’ group or of a closely related species. The Mosasaur lived approximately 67 million years ago.
