An odd new genus and species of Maastrichtian mosasaur: Khinjaria acuta

[Jared C]

Yesterday, Longrich et. al published a new genus from late maastrichtian of morocco. Texas's very own Mike Polcyn is second author on the paper.

The paper establishes tribe Selmasaurini to describe the clade consisting of Selmasaurus, Gavialimimus, Goronyosaurus, and now Khinjaria. 

 

As you can see - it's an odd mosasaur. It's thought that Plioplatecarpine diversity receded as the Cretaceous ended, so alone on the basis of it's age, Khinjaria is unusual. But, it's also very large for a plioplatecarpine, at 8m (26 feet), and has unusual skull morphology: Short snout, big teeth, and tiny eyes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm having trouble getting the paper to open, so I'll just link the wikipedia instead.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khinjaria

 

Edited March 3 by Jared C

[North]

Wow. Marocco seems to reveal more and more mosasaurs. Its amazing how many species were out there.

 

Hopefully there would be more detailed pictures of the specimen.

[LeeB]

Thanks for posting the pictures.

It looks like by the Maastrichtian each part of the world had developed its own mosasaur radiation.

There was some overlap between large pelagic species that were more widespread but a lot of the smaller species seem to be doing there own thing; especially in the tropics.

It makes you wonder what they will find in South America or Australia if/when they get good specimens.

Certainly the European, North American, Japanese, African and New Zealand species all differ from each other;; and the East and West coasts of North America have different species.

I also wonder what will be found in Central Asia where there was a sea way, and in Madagascar or India.