Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: When were the first mososaur fossils discovered?
The first publicized discovery of a partial fossil mosasaur skull in 1764 by quarry workers in a subterranean gallery of a limestone quarry in Mount Saint Peter, near the Dutch city of Maastricht, preceded any major dinosaur fossil discoveries, but remained little known. However, a second find of a partial skull drew the Age of Enlightenment's attention to the existence of fossilized animals that were different from any known living creatures. When the specimen was discovered between 1770 and 1774, Johann Leonard Hoffmann, a surgeon and fossil collector, corresponded about it with the most influential scientists of his day, making the fossil famous. The original owner, though, was Godding, a canon of Maastricht cathedral.
Recent molecular phylogenetic studies suggest that most placental orders diverged late in the Cretaceous period, about 100 to 85 million years ago, but that modern families first appeared later, in the late Eocene and early Miocene epochs of the Cenozoic period. Fossil-based analyses, on the contrary, limit the placentals to the Cenozoic. Many Cretaceous fossil sites contain well-preserved lizards, salamanders, birds, and mammals, but not the modern forms of mammals. It is likely that they simply did not exist, and that the molecular clock runs fast during major evolutionary radiations. On the other hand, there is fossil evidence from of hoofed mammals that may be ancestors of modern ungulates.
The Morrison Formation is a sequence of shallow marine and alluvial sediments which, according to radiometric dating, ranges between 156.3 million years old (Ma) at its base, to 146.8 million years old at the top, which places it in the late Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian, and early Tithonian stages of the Late Jurassic period. This formation is interpreted as a semiarid environment with distinct wet and dry seasons. The Morrison Basin where dinosaurs lived, stretched from New Mexico to Alberta and Saskatchewan, and was formed when the precursors to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains started pushing up to the west. The deposits from their east-facing drainage basins were carried by streams and rivers and deposited in swampy lowlands, lakes, river channels and floodplains. This formation is similar in age to the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Germany and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. In 1877 this formation became the center of the Bone Wars, a fossil-collecting rivalry between early paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.
Alamosaurus (; meaning "Ojo Alamo lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs, containing a single known species, Alamosaurus sanjuanensis, from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now southern North America. Isolated vertebrae and limb bones indicate that it reached sizes comparable to "Argentinosaurus" and "Puertasaurus", which would make it the largest dinosaur known from North America. Its fossils have been recovered from a variety of rock formations spanning the Maastrichtian age of the late Cretaceous period. Specimens of a juvenile "Alamosaurus sanjuanensis" have been recovered from only a few meters below the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in Texas, making it among the last surviving non-avian dinosaur species.
220,000,000 BC, Late Triassic (Arizona) − This episode follows the evolution of the first dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in the late Triassic period.152,000,000 BC, Late Jurassic (Colorado) − This episode follows the story of a young female "Diplodocus" and her brothers and sisters in the late Jurassic period.149,000,000 BC, Late Jurassic (Oxfordshire) − This episode follows the life of several baby "Ophthalmosaurus" and a bull "Liopleurodon" in the late Jurassic period.127,000,000 BC, Early Cretaceous (Brazil) − This episode follows a male "Ornithocheirus" on his long journey to the mating grounds in the early Cretaceous period.106,000,000 BC, Early Cretaceous (Antarctica) − This episode follows the hardships of an Antarctican "Leaellynasaura" clan in the early Cretaceous period.65,500,000 BC, Late Cretaceous (Montana) − This episode follows the final years of the dinosaurs and a mother "Tyrannosaurus rex" and her babies in the late Cretaceous period.49,000,000 BC, Early Eocene (Germany) − This episode follows the life of a mother "Leptictidium" and her babies in the dense forests of Germany in the early Eocene epoch.36,000,000 BC, Late Eocene (Pakistan) − This episode follows the sea journey of a pregnant female "Basilosaurus" search for food in the late Eocene epoch.25,000,000 BC, Late Oligocene (Mongolia) − This episode follows the life of a young "Paraceratherium" and his mother from his birth in the late Oligocene epoch.3,200,000 BC, Late Pliocene (Ethiopia) − This episode follows the hardships of an "Australopithecus" group and a young called Blue in the late Pliocene epoch.1,000,000 BC, Early Pleistocene (Paraguay) − This episode follows a male "Smilodon" called Half-Tooth after he lost his territory in the early Pleistocene epoch.30,000 BC, Late Pleistocene (North Sea, Belgium, and Swiss Alps) − This episode follows a herd of woolly mammoth journey to the Alps in the last Ice Age of the late Pleistocene epoch.This episode details a list of animals from the first season that the developers thought were the most impressive creatures on Earth.
Three specimens have been assigned to "Sinosauropteryx prima": the holotype GMV 2123 (and its counter slab [opposite face], NIGP 127586), NIGP 127587, and D 2141. Another specimen, IVPP V14202, was assigned to the genus but not to the only species by Zhang and colleagues. The assignment of an additional larger specimen to "S. prima", GMV 2124, was later found to be in error. All of the fossils were found in the Jianshangou or Dawangzhangzi Beds of the Yixian Formation in the Beipiao and Lingyuan regions of Liaoning, China. These fossil beds have been dated to 124.6–122 million years ago, during the early Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous.
While the first "Pteranodon" wing bones were collected by Marsh and Cope in the early 1870s, the first "Pteranodon" skull was found on May 2, 1876, along the Smoky Hill River in Wallace County (now Logan County), Kansas, USA, by Samuel Wendell Williston, a fossil collector working for Marsh. A second, smaller skull soon was discovered as well. These skulls showed that the North American pterosaurs were different from any European species, in that they lacked teeth and had bony crests on their skulls. Marsh recognized this major difference, describing the specimens as "distinguished from all previously known genera of the order Pterosauria by the entire absence of teeth." Marsh recognized that this characteristic warranted a new genus, and he coined the name "Pteranodon" ("wing without tooth") in 1876. Marsh reclassified all the previously named North American species from "Pterodactylus" to "Pteranodon". He considered the smaller skull to belong to "Pteranodon occidentalis", based on its size. Marsh classified the larger skull, YPM 1117, in the new species "Pteranodon longiceps", which he thought to be a medium-sized species in between the small "P. occidentalis" and the large "P. ingens". Marsh also named several additional species: Pteranodon comptus and "Pteranodon nanus" were named for fragmentary skeletons of small individuals, while "Pteranodon gracilis" was based on a wing bone that he mistook for a pelvic bone. He soon realized his mistake, and re-classified that specimen again into a separate genus, which he named "Nyctosaurus". "P, nanus" was also later recognized as a "Nyctosaurus" specimen.
Marc Boada discovered, in the late 1990s, a new fossil-bearing locality from the village of Basturs. As the village already lent its name to a locality where dinosaur eggs had been found, it was named the Basturs Poble (BP) locality, "poble" derived from the word for village. The locality belongs to the Conques Formation of the Tremp Group, dated to the late-Early Maastrictian. Over ten years, from 2001 through 2011, field work was done at this site, and a massive bonebed - consisting of some one thousand skeletal elements - was discovered. The discovery was first reported in the literature in an abstract at the "55th Symposium for Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy and the 16th meeting of the Symposium for Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation" conference in 2007. The authors, then, approached the bonebed under the hypothesis of a single species being present at the site. It was reported that all ontogenetic stages were present. Later, a poster presentation and abstract at another conference suggested the specimens may have belonged to "Koutalisaurus kohlororum", but they cautioned an adult dentary from the bonebed would need to be discovered to test the hypothesis. This was later rejected, as "Koutalisaurus" was found to be an invalid "nomen dubium". In 2018, the material was instead noted as possibly referrable to "Pararhabdodon isonensis".
Catopsbaatar is a genus of multituberculate, an extinct order of rodent-like mammals. It lived in what is now Mongolia during the late Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous Period, about 72 million years ago. The first fossils were collected in the early 1970s, and the animal was named as a new species of the genus "Djadochtatherium " in 1974, "D. catopsaloides". The specific name refers to the animal's similarity to the genus "Catopsalis". The species was moved to the genus "Catopsalis" in 1979, and received its own genus ("Catopsbaatar", Greek and Mongolian for "visible hero") in 1994. Five skulls, one molar, and one skeleton with a skull are known; the latter is the genus' most complete specimen. "Catopsbaatar" was a member of the family Djadochtatheriidae.
Fossils of "Smilodon" were discovered in North America from the second half of the 19th century onwards. In 1869, American paleontologist Joseph Leidy described a maxilla fragment with a molar, which had been discovered in a petroleum bed in Hardin County, Texas. He referred the specimen to the genus "Felis" (which was then used for most cats, extant as well as extinct) but found it distinct enough to be part of its own subgenus, as "F." ("Trucifelis") "fatalis". The species name means "fate" or "destiny", but it is thought Leidy intended it to mean "fatal". In an 1880 article about extinct American cats, American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope pointed out that the "F. fatalis" molar was identical to that of "Smilodon", and he proposed the new combination "S. fatalis". Most North American finds were scanty until excavations began in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, where hundreds of individuals of "S. fatalis" have been found since 1875. "S. fatalis" has junior synonyms such as "S. mercerii", "S. floridanus", and "S. californicus". American paleontologist Annalisa Berta considered the holotype of "S. fatalis" too incomplete to be an adequate type specimen, and the species has at times been proposed to be a junior synonym of "S. populator". Swedish paleontologists Björn Kurtén and Lars Werdelin supported the distinctness of the two species in 1990.
"Sinosauropteryx" was a small theropod with an unusually long tail and short arms. The longest known specimen reaches up to in length, with an estimated weight of It was a close relative of the similar but older genus "Compsognathus", both genera belonging to the family Compsognathidae. Only one species of "Sinosauropteryx" has been named: "S. prima", meaning "first" in reference to its status as the first feathered non-avialian dinosaur species discovered. Three specimens have been described. The third specimen previously assigned to this genus represents either a second, as-yet unnamed species or a distinct, related genus.
The museum's five rooms shows paleontological finds from the Besano area, including the "Besanosaurus", a type of ichthyosaur from the middle Triassic period.
The 6 meter "Besanosaurus leptorhynchus" discovered in 1993 is the biggest sea reptile fossil found in Italy, and was probably a pregnant female.
Since 2001 the museum has also housed the remains of a "Saltriosaurus", discovered in a quarry in Saltrio, which is the first big carnivorous dinosaur found in Lombardia.
Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals, and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats. "Smilodon" lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 mya–10,000 years ago). The genus was named in 1842, based on fossils from Brazil. Three species are recognized today: S. gracilis, S. fatalis, and S. populator. The two latter species were probably descended from "S. gracilis", which itself probably evolved from "Megantereon". The hundreds of individuals obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles constitute the largest collection of "Smilodon" fossils.
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, "Homo neanderthalensis", than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans ("Homo sapiens") as well as archaic "Homo sapiens", sometimes referred to as "Homo helmei". Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
The Late Cretaceous Epoch spans from 100 million to 66 million years ago. The Late Cretaceous featured a cooling trend that would continue into the Cenozoic Era. Eventually, tropical ecology was restricted to the equator and areas beyond the tropic lines featured extreme seasonal changes of weather. Dinosaurs still thrived as new species such as "Tyrannosaurus", "Ankylosaurus", "Triceratops" and Hadrosaurs dominated the food web. Whether or not Pterosaurs went into a decline as birds radiated is debated, however many families survived until the end of the Cretaceous, alongside new species such as the gigantic "Quetzalcoatlus". Marsupials evolved within the large conifer forests as scavengers. In the oceans, Mosasaurs ruled the seas to fill the role of the ichthyosaurs, and huge plesiosaurs, such as "Elasmosaurus", evolved. Also, the first flowering plants evolved. At the end of the Cretaceous, the Deccan Traps and other volcanic eruptions were poisoning the atmosphere. As this was continued, it is thought that a large meteor smashed into Earth, creating the Chicxulub Crater creating the event known as the K-T Extinction, the fifth and most recent mass extinction event, during which 75% of life on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs. Every living thing with a body mass over 10 kilograms became extinct, and the age of the dinosaurs came to an end.
Dimetrodon ( or , meaning "two measures of teeth") is an extinct genus of synapsids that lived during the Cisuralian (Early Permian), around 295–272 million years ago (Ma). It is a member of the family Sphenacodontidae. The most prominent feature of "Dimetrodon" is the large neural spine sail on its back formed by elongated spines extending from the vertebrae. It walked on four legs and had a tall, curved skull with large teeth of different sizes set along the jaws. Most fossils have been found in the southwestern United States, the majority coming from a geological deposit called the Red Beds of Texas and Oklahoma. More recently, fossils have been found in Germany. Over a dozen species have been named since the genus was first described in 1878.
Paleontology has a long history in the State of Illinois, stretching at least as far back as the 1850s, when the first Mazon Creek fossils were being found. Early in the ensuing 20th century a Silurian age fossil reef system was discovered in the state. In the 1950s Francis Tully discovered the "monster" that would later be named in his honor. The Pennsylvanian species "Tullimonstrum gregarium" ("Tully Monster") is the Illinois state fossil. It is one of the few officially designated state fossils that is endemic to the state it represents.
Rhizosmilodon is an extinct genus of saber-tooth cat of the subfamily Machairodontinae that lived during the Early Pliocene and was discovered in the U.S. state of Florida. Comparable in size to a medium-sized modern jaguar at about 165 lb. in weight, fossils of "Rhizosmilodon" are known only from Florida. The best specimens for this species are its lower jaw and teeth, which carry intermediate characteristics between advanced forms such as "Smilodon" and primitive forms such as "Paramachairodus". It was likely an ambush predator, preying on animals such as deer, tapirs and horses.
Prieto-Márquez returned again to the dentary in 2013, in a study alongside colleagues providing a review and investigation of hadrosaurs from all over Europe. Further preparation of the specimen in the time since his last study regarding it revealed the uniqueness of the dentary had been exaggerated significantly by reconstruction of the specimen when it was first prepared in the 1990s. The "Tsintaosaurus" specimens showing the similar condition were found to have been distorted from a similar process. Correcting for the innaccuracies, the Los Llaus dentary is indistinguishable from that of multiple lambeosaurines, and shares no particular connection to "Tsintaosaurus". With this, their reasoning for assignment of the specimen to "Pararhabdodon" was voided, and the specimen is now considered a completely indeterminate lambeosaurine dentary.
In 1983, a relatively complete skeleton was excavated from the Smokejacks pit in Surrey, Engand. These remains were described by British paleontologists Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner in 1986 as the holotype of a new species, "Baryonyx walkeri." After the discovery of "Baryonyx," many new genera have since been described, the majority on very incomplete remains. However, other finds bear enough fossil material and distinct anatomical features to be assigned with confidence. Paul Sereno and colleagues described "Suchomimus" in 1998"," a baryonychine from Niger on the basis of a partial skeleton found in 1997. Later in 2004, partial jaw bones were recovered from the Alcântara Formation, these were referred to a new genus of spinosaurine named "Oxalaia" in 2011 by Alexander Kellner.
Sinosauropteryx (meaning "Chinese reptilian wing", ) is a compsognathid dinosaur. Described in 1996, it was the first dinosaur taxon outside of Avialae (birds and their immediate relatives) to be found with evidence of feathers. It was covered with a coat of very simple filament-like feathers. Structures that indicate colouration have also been preserved in some of its feathers, which makes "Sinosauropteryx" the first non-avialian dinosaurs where colouration has been determined. The colouration includes a reddish and light banded tail. Some contention has arisen with an alternative interpretation of the filamentous impression as remains of collagen fibres, but this has not been widely accepted.
Around 1765 the skull of a "Mosasaurus" was discovered here in a limestone quarry, one of the first recognised reptile fossils, which was later acquired by the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. A more famous "Mosasaurus" fossil was found between 1770 and 1774 but was confiscated by the French in 1794 and is now in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Later dinosaur remains were discovered here as well, belonging to "Betasuchus" and "Orthomerus", as well as turtles and fossils of smaller creatures of the sea.
The first fossils classified as "Sauroposeidon" were four neck vertebrae discovered in rural Oklahoma, not far from the Texas border, in a claystone outcrop that dates the fossils to about 110 million years ago (mya). This falls within the Early Cretaceous Period, specifically between the Aptian and Albian epochs. These vertebrae were discovered in May 1994 at the Antlers Formation in Atoka County, Oklahoma by dog trainer Bobby Cross and secured by Dr. Richard Cifelli and a team from the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in May 1994 and August 1994. Initially the fossils were believed to be simply too large to be the remains of an animal, and due to the state of preservation, believed to be tree trunks. In fact, they are the longest such bones known in dinosaurs. Thus, the vertebrae were stored until 1999, when Dr. Cifelli gave them to a graduate student, Matt Wedel, to analyze as part of a project. Upon their realization of the find's significance, they issued a press release in October 1999, followed by official publication of their findings in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" in March 2000. The new species was named "S. proteles", and the holotype is OMNH 53062.
Since 1836, at least five discoveries of mammoths have been made in Alaska. One of the earliest occurred in 1897 when mammoth bones were discovered in a volcanic cave on St. Paul Island. This location was regarded as so unusual that some researchers had expressed suspicions that the remains were planted there as a practical joke. In 1850, another major paleontological milestone in the state was reached with what was probably the first publication on the state's Tertiary plants. Alaska's Tertiary plant fossils were first discovered in places such as the Alaska Peninsula, the Cook Inlet's shoreline, and Unga Island. Between 1902 and 1908, hundreds of sources for Cretaceous plant fossils were discovered. Among the finds were algae, "Ampelopsis", conifers, elm, "Ficus", a great diversity of hepaticae, laurel, magnolia, oaks, "Pinus", "Platanus", and sequoias. Invertebrate remains were also found with the plants. In 1903, several sources of Tertiary plant fossils were discovered between Awik and Eagle City. In the 1930s, several lengthy scientific papers shed even more light on Alaska's Cretaceous flora. As such, Alaska's Cretaceous plants did not receive serious treatment in the scientific literature until 50 years after its Tertiary flora. No more mammoth remains were found until 1952 when a partially fossilized mammoth tooth was discovered. The specimen weighed 3 pounds and 11 ounces while measuring in at 9.75 inches long. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, the University of Michigan sent summer expeditions into Alaska to look for Cenozoic vertebrates, but after three failed attempts they called off the effort.
Some of the first scientifically documented fossil finds in Vermont occurred in the mid-19th century. In 1848 men working on the railroad in Rutland County uncovered the tusk, teeth, and bones of a mammoth. In 1849 the complete skeleton of a primitive whale was discovered. Since then, it has been locally known as the 'Charlotte Whale'. Like the 1848 mammoth remains, this find also occurred at the railroad. However, this find occurred in a Chittenden County Rutland Railroad cut near the town of Charlotte. In 1950, an abundance of fossils were discovered on the Connecticut River three miles southwest of Claremont, New Hampshire. These included corals, brachiopods, crinoids, cephalopods, and a possible trilobite. The fossils date back to the Silurian or Devonian periods. More recently, in 1993, the Pleistocene Beluga whale "Delphinapterus leucas" was designated the Vermont state fossil. In 2014, the 1848 mammoth tooth and tusk were designated as the state terrestrial fossils of Vermont, with the beluga whale skeleton being redesignated as the state marine fossil. The beluga whale is permanantly housed at the Perkins Geology Museum in Burlington, with the mammoth remains housed at the Mount Holly Community Historical Museum in Belmont.