Aug 6, 2019
Two mosasaur specimens from the exhibit “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” at the National Museum of Natural History. The first is the skull of “Platecarpus” ptychodon, a fish eating mosasaur that has been dated to 72 million years ago; the second is Angolasaurus bocagei, the oldest known mosasaur from the Southern Hemisphere, dated to 88 million years ago. Mosasaurs were large marine reptiles from the same order as modern snakes, lizards, and amphisbaenians. They’re common in late Cretaceous fossil deposits and has several adaptations for their marine environment, including a streamlined body and crescent-shaped tail flukes in later species. They became extinct during the K-Pg event 66 million years ago.