Ancient marine reptile fossil, publish ground-breaking evolutionary
insight

Date:
June 26, 2023
Source:
University of North Florida
Summary:
Researchers who have unlocked new evolutionary information
following the discovery of a 94-million-year-old mosasaur in
the gray shale badlands of the National Park Service Glen Canyon
National Recreation Area in southern Utah.


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==========================================================================
FULL STORY ========================================================================== University of North Florida faculty member Dr. Barry Albright is
part of a research team led by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
who have unlocked new evolutionary information following the discovery
of a 94-million-year-old mosasaur in the gray shale badlands of the
National Park Service Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southern
Utah. Mosasaurs are fully marine-adapted reptiles that swam the seas
while dinosaurs ruled the land. The ground-breaking research was just
published in Cretaceous Research.

The journey began nearly 11 years ago as Scott Richardson, a trained
volunteer working under Dr. Albright, searched for fossilized remains
of creatures that once swam in a vast seaway that covered most of the
middle of North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 84
and 95 million years ago. In March 2012, Richardson found numerous small
skull fragments and vertebrae of what proved to be an early mosasaur
scattered across a broad shale slope.

"During the time the Tropic Shale was being deposited, about 94 million
years ago, mosasaurs were still very small, primitive, and in the
early evolutionary stages of becoming fully marine adapted. For these
reasons, their fossils are extremely rare and difficult to find," said
Dr. Albright.

A joint team from the BLM and National Park Service recovered nearly
50% of the specimen over the course of the next two field seasons,
enough to determine its exact identity. Dr. Alan Titus, BLM Paria
River District paleontologist, led a crew of BLM staff and volunteers
on the research. The team included volunteer Steve Dahl who was later
honored in the species name, Sarabosaurus dahli, or "Dahl's reptile of
the mirage." The name alludes to both the ancient seaway in which this
animal swam that has long since vanished and the mirages that accompany
the region's extreme summer heat.

"Mosasaurs from younger rocks are relatively abundant, but mosasaurs
are extremely rare in rocks older than about 90 million years," said
Dr. Titus.

"Finding one that preserves so much informative data, especially one of
this age, is truly a significant discovery." The oldest mosasaurs are
small, about 3 feet long, but they evolved into gigantic lizard-like
marine predators that dominated the oceans during the latter part of
the dinosaur age. Their land-dwelling ancestors were similar to the
modern Komodo Dragon, but through time their aquatic cousins evolved streamlined bodies, paddle-like fins, and tails that propelled them
through the water. Early forms were more lizard-like in appearance and
retained relatively primitive tails and limbs, but Sarabosaurus possessed
one important difference, a new way to circulate blood into its brain.

"Sarabosaurus sheds light on long-standing questions regarding the
relationship of some early branching mosasaurid species, but also
provides new insights into the evolution and antiquity of a novel
cranial blood supply seen in a particular group of mosasaurs," said
Dr. Michael J. Polcyn of the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and
Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

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========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_North_Florida. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Michael J. Polcyn, Nathalie Bardet, L. Barry Albright, Alan
Titus. A new
lower Turonian mosasaurid from the Western Interior Seaway and
the antiquity of the unique basicranial circulation pattern in
Plioplatecarpinae. Cretaceous Research, 2023; 105621 DOI: 10.1016/
j.cretres.2023.105621 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230626164155.htm

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