Dec.
19, 2012 — A new mosasaur species discovered in Hungary is the first known
example of this group of scaled reptiles to have lived in freshwater river
environments similar to modern freshwater dolphins.
The
research is published Dec. 19 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Laszlo
Makadi from the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Hungary and colleagues from
the University of Alberta, Canada and MTA-ELTE Lendület Dinosaur Research
Group, Hungary.
The
species lived about 84 million years ago, the largest specimens reached about
20 feet in length, and belongs to a family called 'mosasaurs', conventionally
thought of as gigantic finned marine lizards, similar and perhaps even related
to present day monitor lizards. The researchers discovered several fossils of
the new species, ranging from small juveniles to large adults that suggest that
this species had limbs like a terrestrial lizard, a flattened, crocodile-like
skull, and a tail unlike other known members of the mosasaur family.
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