MOSA
SAURS
A Vicious Predator
In this big motion picture, Jurassic World, mosasaurs were seen in a stand out scene devouring a shark whole. This scene shows the dominance of these creatures! Check out the clip from the movie below:
In the movie clip, the shark is hung up at the surface of the water, which is where Mosasaurus liked to hunt. Generally, it would hang around the upper part of the ocean and wait for marine reptiles that had to surface for air. Since these animals were out of breath, they were vulnerable because they couldn’t dive back into the water to escape the hunting Mosasaurus and were also easy to see because the ocean is light near the surface. Once it spotted its dinner, Mosasaurus used its tail to gain speed and attack. If the prey wasn’t killed on impact, it would be injured and then stalked by the Mosasaurus until it became ready to eat.
Disclaimer: the movie actually exaggerated the size of mosasaurs. The largest recorded size of a mosasaur is approximately 50 metres! However, in the movie they made the mosasaur almost 100 metres.
Ammonites and Mosasaurs
The fossil record provides snapshots of the past that show evolutionary change over the Earth’s past. The picture may be incomplete with missing bits, but fossils help us fill in those gaps and give us evidence for life on Earth! Fossils give us important “clues” that give us snapshots into the past and what life was like there. Index fossils can help palaeontologists determine the age of rock layers through biostratigraphy. For instance, if a mosasaur fossil is found in that specific rock layer, then the scientist would know that the rock layer is also from that time period.
Not only can fossils help us understand the geological time scale, they can also help us understand the lives of the animals from our past. For instance, palaeontologists found evidence of puncture points that they interpreted as bite marks. These bite marks were linked to the mosasaur because of the shapes of the marks, and also the knowledge that the mosasaur was a prominent marine predator at the time.
 An ammonite showing puncture wounds. |  A typical mosasaur jaw, thought to match the marks on the ammonite. |
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