Researchers in Canada are questioning the validity of a 2021 discovery of a new mosasaur species based on a jawbone with unusual teeth. They believe the fossil may be a forgery due to several inconsistencies in the teeth arrangement and the circumstances surrounding its discovery in Morocco.
In 2021, scientists identified a new mosasaur species upon the discovery of a Cretaceous-period jaw with unusual teeth in a Moroccan mine. There’s only one problem—the remains may have been forged.
Our rebuttal to “Xenodens” is now published open-access in The Anatomical Record: this bizarre “shark-toothed” mosasaur is likely both a forgery and nondiagnostic were large marine lizards and one of the oceans’ top predators during the Cretaceous period , with some individuals reaching up to 56 feet long. The researchers from the 2021 study partly based their identification of the new mosasaur species on four sharp teeth found on an incomplete jawbone, dated to between 72.
“Every time one of these teeth is resorbed and falls out, there’s a huge pit left over. And that’s because the next tooth is coming into that hole to build all that tissue back up again so that it’s firmly anchored in the jaw,” he told Live Science. Additionally, Sharpe’s team suggests the presence of “possible adhesive material” and argue that the particular overlap of a kind of tissue over two teeth is unusual and could indicate forgery, according to the study.
FOSSILS MOSASAUR FORGERY PALEONTOLOGY
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