Chilean scientists suddenly came up short against a giant monster, after hiking through bad weather and knee-deep mud in Antarctica.
The monster didn't scare them, even though the mosasaur skull was about 4 feet long.
That was because it had been dead for 66 million years.
This giant sea lizard was a hand-me-down from the age of dinosaurs. This species is thought to be longer than 32 feet.
The Chilean paleontologists called this monster Kaikaifilu hervei. It was only the second mosasaur skull ever discovered in Antarctica. Their findings were published this week in Cretaceous Research.
The fossilized Kaikaifilu skull was discovered in rocks that were 66 million years old, at a time when Antarctica was warmer than it is today.
Hence, though the climate change has made it tough for paleontologists to work, it has also opened the door to major discoveries here. Mosasaurs in the Southern Hemisphere, especially outside of New Zealand, are difficult to locate.
According to Rodrigo Otero, one of the authors of the study, "The increasing diversity of endemic Cretaceous marine reptiles in the southern hemisphere are slowly changing an historical paradigm. Since the 19th century many southern fossil reptiles had been assigned to species from the northern hemisphere. In this sense, Kaikaifilu adds to this paradigm shift. The southern record has scarce informative mosasaur skulls, most of them found in New Zealand. However, in southern South America and Antarctica, mosasaur remains are especially scarce. Hence the relevance of the new specimen, which shows a distant kinship with respect to the northern hemisphere mosasaurs".
Scientists are now convinced that a lot of teeth discovered on the continent through the years are all Kaikaifilu's, not various types of mososaurs as was thought.
