70 million years ago, during the late cretaceous period, there lived a giant marine lizard
known as the Mosasaurus.
Mosasaurus roamed the oceans around western Europe and north America.
Because this was the cretaceous period, the last era of the dinosaurs, it was one of the
last mosasaurids to exist.
But what it lacked in timing, it made up for in size.
Mosasaurus could reach lengths of 17 meters or 56 feet and weigh 28 tons.
Mosasaurus went extinct at the same time as the rest of the dinosaurs, at the end of the
cretaceous period, but what if it didn’t?
what if Mosasaurus still existed?
That’s what we’re going to talk about, right now on life’s biggest questions.
Hello and welcome back to Life’s biggest questions, the channel that imagines the impossible,
I’m your your host, charlotte dobre.
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You know that part in Jurassic world where there was a feeding show and a gigantic crocodile
lookin’ dinosaur ate a great white shark?
Yeah, That was a mosasaurus.
Lets say, somehow, whatever killed the dinosaurs at the end of the cretaceous period did not
manage to get rid of Mosasaurus, and it was able to live on until modern day.
The mosasaurus looked like it was a cross between a whale and a crocodile.
Mosasaurus is believed to have lived in salt water, but other types of mosasaurs have been
known to live in fresh water rivers as well.
It swam near the surface of the water, because, despite the fact that it had rather large
eyes, it had poor binocular vision.
It also breathed air, making it a lizard, not a fish.
Even though it had poor vision, it also had a huge, double hinjed jaw and massive teeth.
Mosasaurus was a carnivore.
Its favourite snacks included fish, birds, pleisosaurs, other mosasaurs and turtles.
Its strong tail and barrel shaped body suggests that it swum around similar to sharks.
Mosasaurus was likely at the top of the foodchain in its ecosystem.
It was so big, and its jaw opened so wide, it could eat pretty much anything it wanted.
Mosasaurus pierced its prey and then swallowed it whole.
Toward the end of the cretaceous period, pleisosaurs and ichthyosaurs began to go extinct, making
mosasaurs the prominent preditor of the seas.
For this reason, if mosasaurus had not gone extinct, our oceans would be far less populated.
It would likely feed on huge sharks, small whales and dolphins.
Perhaps many of the larger marine animals we currently know today, would not have had
the chance to exist at all.
Mosasaurus would have just eaten all of them.
Especially Sharks.
Mosasaurus loved sharks.
The interesting thing is, passengers of a carnival cruise back in 2014 claim to have
seen a huge creature of some sort swimming near the ship, which was in the middle of
the gulf of mexico at the time.
It became as the carnival cruise monster, and a passenger named Paul George described
what he saw as being a huge monster, 50 feet in length.
The creature came up for air, but there was no spouting.
It exhaled below the surface of the water, like a crocodile.
To this day, its uncler what Paul George saw, but it definitely was out of the ordinary.
Perhaps mosasaurs didn’t even go entirely extinct, and they could be roaming around
our vast oceans and we have no idea.
Based on this account, one could assume that mosasaurus could live alongside humans at
sea, as long as the boats were big enough.
But it would mean bad news for fisherman in smaller boats as well as people who love to
sail in small boats recreationally.
Mosasaurus’s jaw was so wide it could pretty much just swallow a whole boat in one go.
That wouldn’t however mean that humans would have to avoid the sea completely, they would
just need bigger boats.
Mosasaurus might have been the top predator at the end of the cretaceous period, but another
top predator has emerged since then, Humans.
Because Mosasaurus needed to come to the surface to breathe air once in a while, that’s when
it’s most vulnerable, and when it could become a target for fisherman.
If mosasaurus were still alive today, its likely a scene similar to the one in Jurassic
world would become reality.
We would probably want to keep some mosasaur specimens in captivity, both for study, and
for entertainment.
Millions of spectators would bare witness to the mosasaur, the ancient crocodile that
managed to live through the greatest extinction event in the history of our planet.
For now, I’m charlotte dobre and you’ve been watching life’s biggest questions.
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