Giant Prehistoric Marine Lizard Unearthed in Morocco: 8-Meter ’Sea Monster’ with Knife-Like Teeth

The animal has a massive body, "a demon face and knife-like teeth," details Nicholas R. Longrich, one of the researchers involved in this discovery, on his blog. Khinjaria acuta has a skull nearly a meter long and a size of 7 to 8 meters. A giant of the seas, it fed on large fish, saurocephalids, sharks and even young mosasaurs.

"This is an animal longer than a great white and comparable to a killer whale in terms of length or skull length, although, given the killer whale’s massive body, it was probably not as heavy as a killer whale. It’s still a very large animal," explains Longrich.

And he continues: "What’s surprising here is that we already have a great diversity of large predators including mosasaurs like the mosasaurines Mosasaurus beaugei, Thalassotitan atrox, Prognathodon currii and the tylosaurine Hainosaurus. The seas off Morocco seem far too populated to accommodate yet another large predator. And yet we continue to find more and more species."