Mount Saint Peter
Around 1765 the skull of a "Mosasaurus" was discovered here in a limestone quarry, one of the first recognised reptile fossils, which was later acquired by the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. A more famous "Mosasaurus" fossil was found between 1770 and 1774 but was confiscated by the French in 1794 and is now in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Later dinosaur remains were discovered here as well, belonging to "Betasuchus" and "Orthomerus", as well as turtles and fossils of smaller creatures of the sea.
Tylosaurus
Like many other mosasaurs, the early history of this taxon is complex and involves the infamous rivalry between two early American paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Originally, the name ""Macrosaurus" proriger" was proposed by Cope for a fragmentary skull and thirteen vertebrae collected from near Monument Rocks in western Kansas in 1868. It was placed in the collections of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Only a year later, Cope redescribed the same material in greater detail and referred it, instead, to the English mosasaur taxon "Liodon". Then, in 1872, Marsh named a more complete specimen as a new genus, "Rhinosaurus" ("nose lizard"), but soon discovered that this name had already been used for a different animal. Cope suggested that "Rhinosaurus" be replaced by yet another new name, "Rhamposaurus" which also proved to be preoccupied. Marsh finally erected "Tylosaurus" later in 1872, to include the original Harvard material as well as additional, more complete specimens which had also been collected from Kansas. A giant specimen of "T. proriger", recovered in 1911 by C. D. Bunker near Wallace, Kansas is one of the largest skeletons of "Tylosaurus" ever found. It is currently on display at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural history.
In 1918, Charles H. Sternberg found a "Tylosaurus", with the remains of a plesiosaur in its stomach. The specimen is currently mounted in the United States National Museum (Smithsonian) and the plesiosaur remains are stored in the collections. Although these important specimens were briefly reported by C. H. Sternberg (1922), the information was lost to science until 2001. This specimen was rediscovered and described by Everhart (2004a). It is the basis for the story line in the 2007 National Geographic IMAX movie "", and a book by the same name (Everhart, 2007).