Mosasaur skull query

[Aurelius]

Can anyone please offer an opinion on this? The bone appears to be genuine, as far as I can tell, but all but one of the teeth are added in after. The back of the skull seems to be in the wrong position in relation to the frontal bone - does this imply compositing? Something looks 'off' to me, but I haven't seen all that many skulls like this. Combine that with the low-resolution photos and I thought I'd ask for some opinions. Thank you.

 

 

 

[Wolf89]

At least a few of those teeth look placed to me, but I'm no expert

[Fossildude19]

The vertebrae look like fish verts, to me.  

Whole thing looks cobbled together. 

Just my opinion. 

@LordTrilobite

[Fossildude19]

Rotated and enlarged:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LordTrilobite]

This is absolutely 100% certainly a composite. What a horrid monster and a waste of good bones. It all seems to be mosasaur parts. But that's just it, parts.

 

The bones themselves all look reasonably real and of decent quality. Though it's not really visible on these photos if the teeth have been composited. But any original association is gone as it has definitely been tampered with. The matrix around the bone is all smudgy, which is a telltale sign that glue is involved.

 

Lets start with the "neck". It's definitely mosasaur, but it's made up of caudal vertebrae. So it's a partial tail, not a neck.

 

Now the "skull", if you can call it that.

The jaws look okay-ish, but the premaxilla is missing and the artist that reconstructed this doesn't seem to have left a space for it. When we move further back along the jaw it gets worse, there seems to be no nostril to speak of, partially due to the missing premaxilla and nasals as well as the maxillae being much too close together. Many of the teeth also seem to be of different sizes, which suggests further compositing. The lower jaws are missing the back but the composition almost suggests that the jaws should be considered complete. There seem to be jugals and paired frontals, but there's no real space for the eye sockets, though in theory the skull could just have collapsed naturally. But since it's so symmetrical I find this highly unlikely. Bones such as the prefrontals in between the frontals and maxillae are also missing which suggests that the frontals and maxillae weren't found in this orientation together as you'd expect those prefrontals in between there. The back of the frontals looks like it might have been put together from different bones as it looks a bit haphazard without features. And there there's the back of the skull. Or rather the lack of the back of the skull. It's completely missing. There is no sign of the back of the jaws, the quadrate or braincase. There is just the pasted in caudal vertebrae.

 

Now it could be possible that most of this skull belongs to a single individual. I'm thinking possibly the maxillae, dentaries, jugals and frontals. But since this piece has definitely been tampered with and there have been at least some additions, there is no way of knowing what belongs to what and if any pieces actually belong to the same animal.

 

Stay away from this monstrosity folks!

[Raggedy Man]

Looks fishy to me.

[Aurelius]

50 minutes ago, LordTrilobite said:

Stay away from this monstrosity folks!

 

Thanks for such a comprehensive answer I thought some of it looked wrong, but I suppose I'd hoped it had just been jigged with a little, rather than being a fully-fledged, slapped-together composite. I was just a couple of hundred dollars short of being able to bid on the beautiful Halisaurus skull that was auctioned recently, and that hurt!

 

There does appear to be an interesting layer of bone in-situ further down in this block, so perhaps only the top part has been interfered with.

 

 

[SailingAlongToo]

My only thought and comment is...........OUCH!!!!

[Dave pom Allen]

if is to good to be true and that condition its is probably fake or composite,in my opinion its composite

 

[jnoun11]

hi

the market is now full of frankenstein monsters, this one is a good exemple... like i said always, ask for pictures of unprepared specimen on matrix. lord of trilobite all-ready said how this specimen is fake.