References
Reference
Everhart, Michael J. (2004) Plesiosaurs as the Food of Mosasaurs; New Data on the Stomach Contents of a Tylosaurus proriger (Squama ta; Mosasauridae) from the Niobrara Formation of Western Kansas; The Mosasaur, 7, pp.41-46
Plesiosaurs as the Food of Mosasaurs; New Data on the Stomach Contents of a Tylosaurus proriger (Squama ta; Mosasauridae) from the Niobrara Formation of Western Kansas
Principal Author
Michael J. Everhart
Header
Academic paper
Journal
The Mosasaur
Volume
7
Pages
41-46
Abstract
Although plesiosaurs and mosasaurs co-existed for about 25 million years at the end of the Cretaceous, the fossil record was mute regarding interactions between these two groups of marine reptiles until a discovery made in 1918. At that time, Charles H. Sternberg uncovered the partially digested bones of a plesiosaur as stomach contents in an adult (8.8 m) Tylosaurus proriger skeleton in the Smoky Hill Chalk Member (Early Campanian) of the Niobrara Formation near Twin Butte Creek in Logan County, Kansas. Sternberg reported his discovery at the annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of Science in 1919 and indicated that the material had been sent to the United States National Museum. Due to unusual circumstances regarding the publication of his brief paper in the Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, however, the association of the two specimens went largely unnoticed until 2001. This association demonstrates conclusively that mosasaurs fed on plesiosaurs and provides additional data about the ecology of the Western Interior Sea. Here the remains are re-examined and discussed in light of related information that has become available in the more than eighty years since their original discovery.
Language
English