Engineering the bite of ancient marine predators

Engineering the bite of ancient marine predators

An international team of researchers, led by paleontologists of the University of Liège, has investigated the biting capabilities of extinct predatory marine reptiles, revealing how these formidable predators could coexist within the same ecosystem. This work sheds new light on the hunting strategies of long-extinct predators that dominated the seas during the Age of Dinosaurs. The research is published in the journal Palaeontology.

Bite mechanics of ancient marine predators yields surprising results

The Western Interior Seaway, which existed roughly 80 million years ago, split North America into North and South. It was a warm, shallow sea teeming with life from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Fish, squid, and marine reptiles—the lizards that hunted them—inhabited this bountiful marine desert. Some of these predators included large-bodied, or sometimes giant-sized, mosasaurs. These semi-aquatic reptiles re-evolved to live in the ocea…