Marine reptiles, Morocco
Skull Halisaurus
Halisaurus
The marine reptile of the last Cretaceous seas.
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- Epoch
- Cretaceous period
- Age
- ≈ 72–66 Mya
- Origin
- Morocco
- Size
- 59 × 24 × 17 cm
- Classification
- Halisaurus, halisaurines — an early branch of mosasaurs, relatives of modern monitor lizards
- Habitat
- The warm shelf seas of the late Cretaceous
- Ref.
- R–0619
About 70 million years ago shallow seas covered much of what is now North Africa. The top of their food chain was held by mosasaurs — marine reptiles descended from land ancestors close to monitor lizards, which returned to the ocean.
Halisaurus was a small mosasaur from an early branch of the family: three to four metres long, with narrow elongated jaws and a close-set row of conical teeth. It hunted fish and cephalopods in shallow waters, yielding to giants such as Mosasaurus in size, but not in the speed of its strike.
Skulls of Halisaurus are found in the phosphorite beds of Morocco — on the floor of a former sea where the remains of marine reptiles accumulated for millions of years. Complete skulls of this genus are rare: the thin bones usually do not withstand the pressure of the rock.
Mosasaurs vanished at the boundary of the Cretaceous and Palaeogene periods — together with the non-avian dinosaurs, a mere couple of million years before the rise of the first large mammals.
In life
Halisaurus in the same profile as the skull: scaly skin, a narrow mouth with a row of conical teeth, a large eye. Shallow waters of the Late Cretaceous sea.