![]() This continuing exploration underscores the dynamism of scientific discovery and the endless surprises that the past still holds for the future. The discovery of Stelladens mysteriosus, alongside other recent finds, paints an evolving picture of the Late Cretaceous, offering a tantalizing glimpse into a world that vanished 66 million years ago. Jalil likened the myriad of discoveries to the “works of an artist with an overflowing imagination.” He stressed that Morocco’s sites provide an unparalleled glimpse into the extraordinary biodiversity that existed just before the catastrophic end of the Cretaceous period. He highlighted the astounding number of surprising discoveries, including mosasaurs with teeth arranged like a saw, a turtle with a snout fashioned as a snorkel, a myriad of vertebrates of various shapes and sizes, and now, a mosasaur with star-shaped teeth. Nour-Eddine Jalil, a professor at the Natural History Museum and a researcher at University Cadi Ayyad in Morocco, also echoed the sentiment. The amount of diversity at the end of the Cretaceous is just staggering.” “This is the third new species to appear, just this year. “We’re not even close to finding everything in these beds,” said Dr. The authors of the study anticipate many more surprises in the coming years. Most species are rare, and in a highly diverse ecosystem, finding all of the rare species may take several decades. The constant discovery of new species in the Cretaceous of Morocco underscores the fact that our understanding of this era is still evolving. Still many unknowns left to be discovered However, the discovery of Stelladens, along with other recent finds from Morocco, hints that mosasaurs and other marine reptiles were evolving rapidly up to their extinction, suggesting they disappeared at their zenith rather than slowly fading away. This extinction led to the demise of the mosasaurs, dinosaurs, and around 90 percent of all species on Earth. They evolved around 100 million years ago and diversified until 66 million years ago, when a catastrophic asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, instigating a mass extinction event. They were giant lizards, akin to Komodo dragons, snakes, and iguanas, designed for an aquatic lifestyle. It’s possible this mosasaur ate something, and occupied a niche, that simply doesn’t exist anymore, and that might explain why nothing like this is ever seen again.”ĭespite their imposing size, mosasaurs were not dinosaurs. “There were weird animals living in the Cretaceous- ammonites, belemnites, baculites – that no longer exist. ![]() “That might seem to suggest it’s eating something small, and lightly armoured – thin-shelled ammonites, crustaceans, or bony fish – but it’s hard to know,” said Longrich. However, the teeth weren’t sturdy enough to handle heavily armored animals like clams or sea urchins. “So what’s it eating? Phillips head screws? IKEA furniture? Who knows.”Īlthough small, the mosasaur teeth were robust and showed signs of wear at their tips, suggesting that soft-bodied prey were unlikely targets. The teeth, he noted, look like the tip of a Phillips-head screwdriver or maybe a hex wrench. “We have no idea what this animal was eating, because we don’t know of anything similar either alive today, or from the fossil record,” said Dr. These teeth, likely facilitating a specialized feeding strategy or diet, open up a mystery about Stelladens’ food habits. The consistent shape found in several of Stelladens’ teeth implies that this odd structure wasn’t a pathology or a mutation but a feature of the species. ![]() Nathalie Bardet, a marine reptile expert from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, shared a similar sentiment: “I’ve worked on the mosasaurs of Morocco for more than 20 years, and I’d never seen anything like this before – I was both perplexed and amazed!” These teeth were no fluke ![]() “It’s not like any mosasaur, or any reptile, even any vertebrate we’ve seen before.”ĭr. Nick Longrich from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, who spearheaded the study, expressed his amazement: “It’s a surprise,” he shared. Its teeth displayed blade-like ridges, assembled in a pattern reminiscent of a star or a cross-head screwdriver.Ĭontrary to the typical mosasaur tooth structure that includes two bladelike, serrated ridges to slice through prey, Stelladens displayed an astonishing four to six of these blades on each tooth.ĭr. Residing in the Late Cretaceous era in what is now Morocco, Stelladens boasted a unique dental configuration. ![]()
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