page_title: Timeline of mosasaur research
section_title: 1850s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of mosasaur research / 19th century / 1850s
caption_attribution_description: English: Mosasaurus from the Crystal Palace
context_page_description: This timeline of mosasaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, and taxonomic revisions of mosasaurs, a group of giant marine lizards that lived during the Late Cretaceous Epoch. Although mosasaurs went extinct millions of years before humans evolved, humans have coexisted with mosasaur fossils for millennia. Before the development of paleontology as a formal science, these remains would have been interpreted through a mythological lens. Myths about warfare between serpentine water monsters and aerial thunderbirds told by the Native Americans of the modern western United States may have been influenced by observations of mosasaur fossils and their co-occurrence with creatures like Pteranodon and Hesperornis.
  The scientific study of mosasaurs began in the late 18th century with the serendipitous discovery of a large fossilized skeleton in a limestone mine near Maastricht in the Netherlands. The fossils were studied by local scholar Adriaan Gilles Camper, who noted a resemblance to modern monitor lizards in correspondence with renowned French anatomist Georges Cuvier.
context_section_description: 1850
  Robert Gibbes reported the presence of teeth and vertebrae now recognized as mosasaurian in origin from a limestone deposit in Alabama.
  1853
  Paul Gervaius creates the family Mosasauridae. Originally included genera are Mosasaurus, Liodon, Onchosaurus (later recognised as a batoid fish), Oplosaurus (later recognised as a sauropod dinosaur), Macrosaurus (a historical wastebasket taxon) and Geosaurus (later recognised as a thalattosuchian).
caption: The Mosasaurus from the Crystal Palace
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