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A near complete skull fossil found in Antarctica has revealed the oldest known modern bird — a mallard duck-size creature related to the waterfowl that live by lakes and oceans today, a new ...
The genus was one of the first Mesozoic marine reptiles known to science—the first fossils of Mosasaurus were found as skulls in a chalk quarry near the Dutch city of Maastricht in the late 18th century, and were initially thought to be crocodiles or whales. One skull discovered around 1780 was famously nicknamed the "great animal of Maastricht".
A 69-million-year-old skull found in Antarctica belonged to what scientists say is the oldest known modern bird.. An early relative of the continent’s ducks and geese, it lived off the Antarctic ...
The Mosasaurus hoffmannii skull found in Maastricht between 1770 and 1774 The first publicized discovery of a partial fossil mosasaur skull in 1764 by quarry workers in a subterranean gallery of a limestone quarry in Mount Saint Peter , near the Dutch city of Maastricht , preceded any major dinosaur fossil discoveries, but remained little known.
In this superfamily, the humerus is widest near the shoulder, the femur is widest near the knee, the radius is reniform ("kidney-shaped"), and phalanges are long and plate-like. Askeptosauroids retain hourglass-shaped limb bones like land reptiles, but even they share specializations with thalattosauroids such as a short tibia and fibula , with ...
In addition, the horns are more elongated, the parietals have a convex upper surface, and the rear edge of the skull is more strongly and smoothly curved. While juvenile members of D. magnicornis also have a smoothly curved rear edge of the skull, all known D. brevirostris specimens are clearly adults as shown by their robust skull ...
A desmostylian skull has an elongated and broadened rostrum, with the nasal opening located slightly dorsally. The zygomatic arches are prominent (behind the eyes), the paroccipital processes elongated (downward-pointing processes behind the jaw-joints), and the epitympanic sinuses open into the temporal fossae (cavities above the ear holes).
A 2020 study found numerous differences between the skulls of large and small specimens, formalizing the proposal to divide the two into separate species. Moreover, a histological investigation revealed that one small specimen, PIMUZ T 1277, was a skeletally mature adult at a length of only 1.5 meters (4.9 ft).