Mosasauroidea

Mosasauroidea is a superfamily of extinct marine reptiles that existed during the Late Cretaceous. Basal members of this group consist of small semiaquatic forms with terrestrial limbs ("plesiopedal"), while later members include larger fully aquatic paddle-limbed ("hydropedal") forms commonly known as mosasaurs. These were traditionally grouped within their own separate families, the Aigialosauridae and Mosasauridae respectively. However, phylogenetic studies have since found plesiopedal mosasauroids to be a non-monophyletic group, with some taxa nestled within the mosasaurids. Daniel Madzia and Andrea Cau in 2017 defined Mosasauroidea as "the most inclusive clade containing Mosasaurus hoffmannii and Aigialosaurus dalmaticus, but not Dolichosaurus longicollis, Adriosaurus suessi, or Pontosaurus lesinensis".

Mosasauroidea

Gorjanovic-Kramberger · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
SquamataPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB

Time the record covers

At least 49 million years on record.

The record covers at least 132.6 Mya to 83.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 137.05 Mya to 66 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 43 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 42 of 43 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 43 occurrences138–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–134 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences134–131 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–99 Mya — about 4 occurrences99–97 Mya — about 7 occurrences97–94 Mya — about 7 occurrences94–92 Mya — about 8 occurrences92–89 Mya — about 6 occurrences89–87 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences87–84 Mya — about 2 occurrences84–82 Mya — about 2 occurrences82–79 Mya — about 1 occurrence79–77 Mya — about 1 occurrence77–74 Mya — about 1 occurrence74–72 Mya — about 1 occurrence72–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences132.6 Mya83.6 Mya138 Mya65 Mya

43 occurrences of Mosasauroidea on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

43 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

17 formations

Starigrad Limestone — 43.19°N, 16.65°EBet Meir or Amminadav — 31.95°N, 35.26°ELa Cabaña — 43.34°N, 5.84°WWadhurst Clay — 50.86°N, 0.44°EAkrabou — 31.85°N, 4.93°WB3/C1 — 45.93°N, 0.98°WCsehbánya — 47.22°N, 17.60°EAgua Nueva — 26.75°N, 100.05°WBoquillas — 29.32°N, 103.62°WAjka Coal — 47.08°N, 17.57°EJizera — 49.80°N, 16.30°ETeplice — 50.50°N, 14.00°EVegas de Matute — 41.08°N, 4.32°WGreenhorn Limestone — 37.22°N, 103.60°WSchönleiten — 47.67°N, 14.80°ETentúgal — 40.25°N, 8.57°WArenas de Utrillas — 40.96°N, 2.67°W

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The named rock units Mosasauroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Mosasauroidea and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Mosasauroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

334 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 40 sites for Mosasauroidea, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

28 references

Each of the 43 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 16 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Mosasauroidea

Credit
Gorjanovic-Kramberger
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Mosasauroidea was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itSquamata through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.