Globidens
Globidens | ||||||||||||
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Globidens in a living reconstruction |
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Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
Upper Cretaceous ( Campanium to Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
83.6 to 66 million years | ||||||||||||
Locations | ||||||||||||
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Systematics | ||||||||||||
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Scientific name | ||||||||||||
Globidens | ||||||||||||
Gilmore , 1912 |
Globidens is a genus of mosasaurs from the Upper Cretaceous period . Gilmore published the first scientific description of the taxon in 1912.
Fossil sites
Fossil remains of this mosasaur were first found in 1912 in Alabama near Selma , then in other regions of North America. Finds in Belgium and Morocco followed . The genus was probably distributed worldwide.
features
Globidens reached a length of about six meters. It differs from most other mosasaurs by its rounded teeth ( Globidens = "ball tooth "). The smaller Carinodens belgicus had similar teeth . Two types of teeth were found on the jaw fragments, spherical, quite smooth teeth and those with a corrugated surface and a large protrusion near the tooth root .
It is believed that the lizards ate mussels , possibly also ammonites .
species
- G. alabamaensis ( type species ) Gilmore, 1912
- G. dakotensis Russell, 1975
- G. phosphaticus Bardet et al., 2004
Skeletal material was found only for G. alabamaensis , the other species are only known from dental finds.
literature
- Richard Ellis: Sea Dragons. Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 2003, ISBN 0-7006-1269-6 .
- Nathalie Bardet, Xabier Pereda Suberbiola, Mohamed Iarochène, Mohamed Amalik, Baâdi Bouya: Durophagous Mosasauridae (Squamata) from the Upper Cretaceous phosphates of Morocco, with description of a new species of Globidens. In: Netherlands Journal of Geosciences / Geologie en Mijnbouw. Vol. 84, No. 3, 2005, ISSN 0016-7746 , pp. 167-175, digitized version (PDF; 563 kB) ( Memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
Web links
- Mike Everhart: Globidens dakotensis - A Rare, Shell Crushing Mosasaur from the Pierre Shale (Late Cretaceous) of Western Kansas oceansofkansas.com