A life reconstruction of the plioplatecarpine mosasaur Angolasaurus bocagei, alongside the turtle Angolachelys mbaxi. Image credit: Henry Sharpe / CC BY-SA 4.0.
SciNews has a story about a new Mosasaur found in Kansas. The animal, named Ectenosaurus clidastoides, lived during the Cretaceous Period about 80 million years ago in what is now western Kansas. Details were published in a paper in the journal Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
The newly-identified mosasaur species lived during the Late Cretaceous epoch, some 80 million years ago.
The ancient creature inhabited the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow body of marine water that divided the North American continent into two distinct landmasses.
Named Ectenosaurus everhartorum, it is only the second species in the Ectenosaurus genus.
The marine animal was about 5.5 m (18 feet) long, and resembled the false gharial (Tomistoma schlegelii).
“If Ectenosaurus clidastoides with its long, slender jaws resembles a gharial crocodile, the new species is closer to a false gharial crocodile with notably blunter jaws,” said Dr. Takuya Konishi, a paleontologist in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.