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Later in the 19th century pterosaurs were discovered in North America as well, the first of which was a spectacular animal named Pteranodon by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. [7] Various aspects of pterosaur biology invited controversy from the beginning.
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 ...
The Lewis and Clark Expedition may have discovered the first Mosasaurus fossil in North America. The first possible recorded discovery of a mosasaur in North America was of a partial skeleton described as "a fish" in 1804 by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery during their 1804–1806 expedition across the western United States.
During the Triassic, corals were rare in North America. Nevertheless, some were present on the west coast, although these corals did not congregate into reefs. [49] Ichthyosaurs were one of the most important groups of marine reptiles during the Triassic. Important ichthyosaur fossils of this age were preserved in Nevada. [50]
The first reasonably correct identification of a vertebrate fossil in North America was made in 1725, at a South Carolina plantation called Stono. [7] There slaves had uncovered several large fossil teeth while digging in a swamp. The slaves unanimously identified the teeth as elephant molars, which they would have recognized from life in Africa.
Sea levels were high during the Cretaceous period, causing marine transgressions in many parts of the world, and a great inland seaway in what is now North America. Mosasaur fossils have been found in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, South Africa, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy [30] Bulgaria, the ...
The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite.
The oldest undisputed lizards date to the Middle Jurassic, from remains found In Europe, Asia and North Africa. [53] Lizard morphological and ecological diversity substantially increased over the course of the Cretaceous. [54] In the Palaeogene, lizard body sizes in North America peaked during the middle of the period. [55]