The giant mosasaur Prognathodon is now known from Denmark!

[The Amateur Paleontologist]

A paper was recently published announcing the presence of Prognathodon in the Late Cretaceous chalk of Denmark.  Prognathodon was a large, predatory mosasaur, well-known in the USA and Morocco, but known from other places e.g., the Netherlands.

 

This new study is especially quite a big deal, because mosasaur fossils are incredibly rare in the Danish chalks. Prognathodon is now the 4th mosasaur known from the Late Cretaceous of Denmark, along with Mosasaurus, Plioplatecarpus and Carinodens. 

 

The Danish material is represented by two teeth - one of them being from the fossil site I study, Møns Klint! It's quite exciting that more and more research on the Late Cretaceous vertebrates of Denmark is being done

 

The two danish Prognathodon teeth. The larger one (A-D) was found at Møns Klint, the smaller one (E-H) was found at Stevns Klint. These would have originated from 7.5- and 4-metre long mosasaurs, respectively.

 

This is the new paper describing the mosasaur material: Giltaij, T.J., Milàn, J., Jagt, J.W.M. & Schulp, A.S. (2021). Prognathodon (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from the Maastrichtian chalk of Denmark. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Denmark, vol. 69, pp. 53–58. 

 

You can download the paper from here  : https://2dgf.dk/publikationer/bulletin/bulletin-69-2021/#3

 

Hope you enjoyed this "Made-in-Denmark" mosasaur news  

 

-Christian

[Fossildude19]

Thanks for posting, Christian!