Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Science

Study: Ancient Mosasaurs Gave Birth In Open Sea 24

An anonymous reader writes A new study published in the journal Palaeontology finds that Mosasaurs, the large marine lizards that once populated the waters about 65 million years ago, gave birth to live young in the open ocean. "Mosasaurs are among the best-studied groups of Mesozoic vertebrate animals, but evidence regarding how they were born and what baby mosasaur ecology was like has historically been elusive," said Daniel Field, lead author of a study published online April 10 in the journal Palaeontology. Field is a doctoral candidate in the lab of Jacques Gauthier in Yale's Department of Geology and Geophysics."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Study: Ancient Mosasaurs Gave Birth In Open Sea

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Lesson: Don't give birth in open sea.

  • Indeed news for nerds, but very specialized nerds...
  • Sundays are definitely slow days on the tech & science news front. It is amazing what makes it to the front page on Sundays.
  • by See Attached ( 1269764 ) on Sunday April 12, 2015 @08:19PM (#49460215)
    The alternative for them was on land? I dont get the mysery of this one. Did hey have nests? Were they territorial? news that matters. please.
    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday April 12, 2015 @08:35PM (#49460277)

      The alternative for them was on land?

      No, the alternative would have been coastal waters, or an estuary. But there are fewer predators farther out at sea, so they baby would have been safer. The trade off is that there isn't much food out there, so the baby mososaurs would soon have to swim back towards shore, unless the mom could feed them somehow, maybe by regurgitation.

    • The alternatives were land, or coastal waters, as the comment below. Seals and turtles among other mostly marine animals lay eggs or give birth on land, so it may have been possible for Mosasaurs. Except that these researchers are saying that it wasn't.
    • by Chuckstar ( 799005 ) on Sunday April 12, 2015 @09:13PM (#49460427)

      Previously, there had been a dearth of evidence of very young (i.e. newborn) Mosasaurs in both open ocean and coastal deposits. That made people think perhaps they used land nests far up rivers, such that newborns would be found in riverbed/riverbank deposits instead of ocean deposits. And that we simply haven't found the right river fossil bed locations for them, yet.

      This new study shows that some skeletons that had originally been thought to be birds, were in fact young Mosasaurs. This reverses the whole thought process, as they now have evidence of very young individuals being found out in the open ocean. Young enough individuals, and far enough out in the deep ocean, that the most likely explanation is that they were born there.

      • Thanks all for the education... I always dug the mosasaurs at the museums. There seemed to always be bigger ones around the corner! having critter that big give birth in the skinny waters I guess could have been an option... but ... good to know how they lived. Frightening beast that they were. Any chance we could get enough DNA to remanufacture one?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    As opposed to all the modern mosasaurs.

  • A lab with my last name on it.
  • This is interesting, but what we all really want to know is if they've made and discoveries elucidating the financial borrowing habits of the aforementioned sea monsters.

Fast, cheap, good: pick two.

Working...