Named Carinodens acrodon, this newly discovered species belongs to the mosasaurid genus Carinodens and was a durophagous. It is thus characterized by a relatively small size and the appearance of a marine lizard measuring two to three meters long, with long and thin jaws and a unique dental morphology among mosaaurids or other vertebrates. Indeed, their teeth are relatively low, rectangular and compressed, and allowed them to feed on hard-shelled invertebrates.
«Early basal mosasaurids had small, conical, curved teeth, an adaptation for hunting relatively small prey like fish and soft-bodied cephalopods», Write on this subject the paleontologist from the University of Bath, Nicholas Longrich, and his colleagues in an article published in the journal Diversity.
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«By the end of the Cretaceous, mosasaurids had developed very diverse dental morphologies. These included massive, conical teeth for grabbing and tearing prey, blunt teeth for crushing bones, knife- and blade-like teeth for stabbing and cutting large prey, saw-like teeth for cutting and low, bulbous teeth for crushing hard-shelled invertebrates», Continue the authors of this discovery.
This new species of mosasaur lived during the late Maastrichtian of the Cretaceous period, approximately 67 million years ago, and coexisted with two other derived species of Carinodens: Carinodens minalmamar and Carinodens belgicus. Although these two species have been reported from many different localities, Carinodens acrodon is so far only known from Morocco.
«The diversity of mosasaurids in Morocco is exceptional and suggests that they continued to radiate until just before the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, and that mosasaurids were perhaps more specific and more ecologically diverse than others. Mesozoic marine clades», conclude the researchers.
