New Mosasaur Species with Unique Star-Shaped Teeth Discovered in Morocco

Stelladens mysteriosus. This is the new species of mosasaur, a marine lizard from the dinosaur era, with strange and striated teeth, different from those of any other known reptile, announced the University of Bath. This species comes from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco and was about twice the size of a dolphin. It had a unique arrangement of teeth, with blade-like ridges along the teeth, arranged in a star-shaped pattern, reminiscent of a cruciform screwdriver, reports Sciencedaily.

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"It’s a surprise," said Dr. Nick Longrich, paleontologist at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath, who led the study. "It looks like no mosasaur, no reptile, and not even any vertebrate we’ve seen before." "I’ve been working on Moroccan mosasaurs for over twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like this before. I was both puzzled and amazed," said Dr. Nathalie Bardet, specialist in marine reptiles at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

This discovery, as well as other recent discoveries from Africa, suggest that mosasaurs and other marine reptiles were evolving rapidly until 66 million years ago, when their extinction occurred following the impact of an asteroid, which also led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs and about 90% of all species on Earth.

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"The fauna has produced an incredible number of surprises: mosasaurs with saw-like teeth, a tuba-nosed turtle, a multitude of vertebrates of various shapes and sizes, and now a mosasaur with star-shaped teeth. It looks like overflowing works. The sites in Morocco offer an unparalleled picture of incredible biodiversity, just before the great end-Cretaceous crisis," commented Nour-Eddine Jalil, professor at the National Museum of Natural History and researcher at the Cadi Ayyad University in Morocco.