page_title: Timeline of mosasaur research
section_title: 2000s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of mosasaur research / 21st century / 2000s
caption_attribution_description: Globidens alabamaensis
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: 2000
  Holmes and Sues argued that Phosphorosaurus was distinct from Halisaurus after all.
  Lingham-Soliar disagreed with Russell's 1970 synonymization of Mosasaurus lemmonnieri and M. conodon.
  Tchernov and others dismissed the snakes Haasiophis and Pachyrhachis, which had been previously put forward as evidence that snakes were close relatives of mosasaurs, as red herrings that were irrelevant to understanding the origin of snakes or any potential evolutionary ties linking them to mosasaurs.
  Case and others published more research on mosasaurs from islands off the coast of Antarctica.
  Páramo-Fonseca described the new genus and species Yaguarasaurus columbianus.
  2001
  Caldwell and Lee reported the discovery of a pregnant aigialosaur specimen of the genus Carsosaurus containing four large embryos inside her. The embryos were oriented ready to be born tail-first, an adaptation seen in modern whales and in other extinct marine reptiles that helps prevent drowning during birth.
  Tsujita and Westermann defended the idea of punctured ammonite shells as mosasaur prey in a contrarian position to the several 1998 papers that doubted this hypothesis. Based on a survey of Placenticeras shells from the Bearpaw Formation of Alberta, they concluded that the arrangements of the holes were too similar to the placement of teeth in a mosasaur's jaw to be the chance result of limpet activity. Their doubts were bolstered by the disparity of abundance in the relevant rocks between the scarce limpet shells and the frequent occurrence of the holes themselves. According to Tsujita and Westermann, the previous attempts to test the effect of a mosasaur bite on a shell experimentally with a simulated jaw assumed an overly simplistic interpretation of mosasaur feeding behavior, so its failure to replicate the shell punctures still did not discredit their putative mosasaurian origins.
  Bardet and Superbiola restudied the Halisaurus remains first discovered in Kansas in 1918 and classified as Halisaurus by Russell in 1970. They found it to be both the oldest specimen referred to that genus and the most primitive member of the entire Mosasauridae.
  Everhart serendipitously rediscovered Sternberg's report of a Tylosaurus with polycotylid stomach contents.
  2002
  Michael Everhart observed that young mosasaur fossils are actually fairly common in the Niobrara Chalk.
  Caitlin Kiernan observed that different kinds of mosasaurs were found at different stratigraphic levels within the Eutaw Formation and Selma Group of Alabama. She described three biostratigraphic zones within this interval based on their mosasaur content: the Tylosaurus acme zone, the Clidastes zone, and the Mosasaurus acme zone. The Tylosaurus zone was deposited in shallow water, while Clidastes seems to have inhabited greater depths.
  Bardet and Tonoglu reported the discovery of Mosasaurus hoffmanni jaw fossils in Kastamonu, Turkey.
  Novas and others described the new species Lakumasaurus antarcticus.
  Dortangs and others described the new species Prognathodon saturator.
  Nicholls and Meckert described the new genus and species Kourisodon puntledgensis.
  Thegarten Lingham-Soliar argued against Nathalie Bardet's attribution of ichthyosaur extinction to the loss of their preferred food sources in the Cenomanian-Turonian extinction event expanded on his own 1999 attribution of ichthyosaur extinction to biotic factors. During the Cretaceous the evolution of many fish groups trended towards faster swimming body types, making them harder to hunt for adult ichthyosaurs and harder to escape from for newborn ichthyosaurs. This ecological scene favored ambush predators like plesiosaurs and the newly evolved mosasaurs over the ichthyosaurs, who succumbed to the competition.
  September
  Christansen and Bonde formally named the Negev desert mosasaur Prognathodon currii.
  2003
  Caldwell and others published a study on the tooth replacement patterns of mosasaurs. They found that mosasaurs replaced their teeth continuously throughout their lives, with each replacing being slightly larger than its predecessor.
  Polcyn, Tchern
caption: Life restoration of Globidens
exif: {"Image XResolution": "7559/200", "Image YResolution": "7559/200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "paint.net 4.0.21"}