The discovery of these jaws with blunt, mushroom-shaped teeth reveals how this Late Cretaceous predator specialized in crushing shells.
These fossils, preserved from the Late Cretaceous period, reveal how the species thrived by crushing shelled prey. This adaptation differentiated it from other large marine predators of its time.In 2023, a private fossil hunter uncovered two jaw fragments belonging toin northeastern Texas, specifically in the Ozan Formation. This discovery has excited researchers due to the rarity of such finds. The fossils date back to the Campanian Age, around 83.6 to 72.1 million years ago.
What makes this discovery even more significant is the fact that G. alabamaensis was first identified in 1912, but only a few near-complete specimens have ever been found. Most fossils consist of teeth or small jaw fragments. The mosasaur’s adaptation to shell-crushing This species inhabited the Western Interior Seaway during the Late Cretaceous period, a water channel that separated North America. It can be hypothesized that due to the large amounts of shelled prey in this seaway, the teeth ofAccording to Franklin, the mosasaurs of that era were rapidly evolving to fill various ecological niches left by other marine predators like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, which had declined due to climate change and ecosystem shifts.
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