Globidens Mosasaur Jaws & Crushing Teeth in Matrix, Late Cretaceous, Morocco

North Africa, Morocco, Khouribga Province, Late Cretaceous. Fossilized jaw sections of Globidens, a mosasaur with distinctive button-like teeth, preserved side by side in an oval block of sandstone matrix. Unlike the curved, pointed teeth of other mosasaurs, each jaw carries a row of rounded, domed crowns rising from the bone. Teeth of this shape were suited to crushing, and Globidens most likely fed on hard-shelled prey such as ammonites, bivalves, and possibly sea turtles. It represents one of the most specialized feeding adaptations among Cretaceous marine reptiles. Mosasaurs were marine reptiles, closely related to modern monitor lizards and snakes. They were not dinosaurs. They ruled the late Cretaceous seas until the extinction at the end of the period, about 66 million years ago. Most mosasaurs had sharp, conical teeth for gripping and slicing prey. Globidens took a different route. Its rounded, bulbous teeth are among the clearest examples of a crushing (durophagous) diet in any reptile, comparable in purpose to the flat crushing teeth of some rays and the shellfish-eating placodonts of the Triassic. Item # 205681

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