Where were the first mososaur fossils discovered?
Mosasaur
Mosasaurs (from Latin "Mosa" meaning the 'Meuse river', and Greek σαύρος "sauros" meaning 'lizard') are an extinct group of large marine reptiles containing 38 genera in total. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Early Cretaceous. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian-Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.
Morrison Formation
It was named after Morrison, Colorado, where the first fossils in the formation were discovered by Arthur Lakes in 1877. That same year, it became the center of the Bone Wars, a fossil-collecting rivalry between early paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. In Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, the Morrison Formation was a major source of uranium ore.
Mosasaur
The smallest-known mosasaur was "Dallasaurus turneri", which was less than long. Larger mosasaurs were more typical, with many species growing longer than . "Mosasaurus hoffmannii", the largest known species, may have reached up to in length. Currently, the largest publicly exhibited mosasaur skeleton in the world is on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba. The specimen, nicknamed "Bruce", is just over long.
Archaeornithoides
In 1965, a Polish-Mongolian paleontological expedition found a fossil of a small dinosaur at Bayn Dzak, Mongolia. In 1983, the find was reported by Andrzej Elzanowski. The remains were named as the type species "Archaeornithoides deinosauriscus" by Elzanowski and Peter Wellnhofer in 1992. In 1993, they were described in more detail by the same authors.
Megalosauridae
From the family's inception, many specimens found in the field have been wrongly classified as megalosaurids. For example, most large carnivores found for about a century after the naming of "Megalosaurus bucklandii" were placed in Megalosauridae. "Megalosaurus" was the first paleontological finding of its kind when William Buckland discovered a giant femur and named it in 1824, predating even the term Dinosauria. When initially defined, the species "M. bucklandii" was anatomically based on various dissociated bones found in quarries around the village of Stonesfield, UK. Some of these early findings included a right dentary with a well-preserved tooth, ribs, pelvic bones, and sacral vertebrae. As early paleontologists and researchers found more dinosaur bones in the surrounding area, they attributed them all to "M. bucklandii" since it was the only named and described dinosaur at this point in history. Therefore, the species was initially described and classified by a mass of possibly unrelated characteristics.
Mosquito
The oldest known mosquito with an anatomy similar to modern species was found in 79-million-year-old Canadian amber from the Cretaceous. An older sister species with more primitive features was found in Burmese amber that is 90 to 100 million years old. Two mosquito fossils have been found that show very little morphological change in modern mosquitoes against their counterpart from 46 million years ago. These fossils are also the oldest ever found to have blood preserved within their abdomens. Despite no fossils being found earlier than the Cretaceous, recent studies suggest that the earliest divergence of mosquitoes between the lineages leading to Anophelinae and Culicinae occurred 226 million years ago.
Prognathodon
A new fossil found in 2008 and described in 2013 belonging to a 1.8 m juvenile "Prognathodon" was found in Jordan's Harrana Site. The fossil was remarkable in that it preserved the outline of the mosasaur's tail fins, revealing that "Prognathodon", like "Platecarpus" and later mosasaurs also had a bilobed tail fluke resembling a downturned shark's tail, the shape of which may have aided the creature in surfacing, as well as attacking prey. The discovery also lends evidence to the theory that later mosasaurs were even more well-adapted to the lifestyle first occupied by the ichthyosaurs.
History of paleontology in the United States
In Spring, 1965 a major discovery of Devonian fossils occurred in Cuyahoga County. A collaboration between the state Highway Department, Ohio Bureau of Public Roads and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History led by the Smithsonian's David Dunkle uncovered as many as 50,000 fish fossils from a construction site. By the ensuing November 120 or more different species had been found there, with half previously unknown to science. That same year, in an unrelated development, the Florissant fossil beds of Colorado were proposed as a potential federal preserve.
In 1978 paleontologist Bill Clemens alerted fellow paleontologists Jack Horner and Bob Makela to the presence of unidentified dinosaur fossils in Bynum, Montana. Horner visited the town and recognized the remains as belonging to a duck-billed dinosaur. While in town the owner of a local rock shop, Marion Brandvold, showed him some tiny bones. Horner identified them as baby duck-bill bones. Horner also knew that this was an important find and convinced Brandvold to donate her fossils to a museum. She obliged and gave them to Princeton University. Horner's team prospected in the area where Brandvold found the baby hadrosaur fossils. Their effort paid off with the discovery of the first scientifically documented dinosaur eggs of the Western Hemisphere and a new kind of duck-bill, "Maiasaura peeblesorum".
Sauroposeidon
The first fossils classified as "Sauroposeidon" were four neck vertebrae discovered in rural Oklahoma, not far from the Texas border, in a claystone outcrop that dates the fossils to about 110 million years ago (mya). This falls within the Early Cretaceous Period, specifically between the Aptian and Albian epochs. These vertebrae were discovered in May 1994 at the Antlers Formation in Atoka County, Oklahoma by dog trainer Bobby Cross and secured by Dr. Richard Cifelli and a team from the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in May 1994 and August 1994. Initially the fossils were believed to be simply too large to be the remains of an animal, and due to the state of preservation, believed to be tree trunks. In fact, they are the longest such bones known in dinosaurs. Thus, the vertebrae were stored until 1999, when Dr. Cifelli gave them to a graduate student, Matt Wedel, to analyze as part of a project. Upon their realization of the find's significance, they issued a press release in October 1999, followed by official publication of their findings in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" in March 2000. The new species was named "S. proteles", and the holotype is OMNH 53062.
Cosesaurus
Cosesaurus is a genus of archosauromorph reptiles likely belonging to the family Tanystropheidae. It is known from fossil imprints of a single small skeleton, MGB V1, which was found in Muschelkalk outcrops near the municipalities of Mont-ral and Alcover in Spain. These outcrops are dated to the Ladinian age of the middle Triassic about 242 to 237 million years ago. The specimen is stored at the Museu Martorell (a.k.a. the Museu Geologia de Barcelona), which is now part of the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. The poor preservation and likely juvenile nature of the specimen has led to the anatomy of "Cosesaurus" being misidentified by several different sources. For example, Paul Ellenberger claimed that it was an ancestor to birds in the 1970s, while Dave Peters claimed that it was a pterosaur ancestor in 2000. Both of these claims contrast with mainstream scientific theories on the origins of either group, and other paleontologists who study the specimen are unable to find the features which Ellenberger or Peters reported to be present. The Ellenberger and Peters hypotheses are thus considered fringe theories with questionable scientific soundness due to their low reproducibility. Mainstream hypotheses for the relations of "Cosesaurus" generally agree that it is a "protorosaur", specifically a tanystropheid closely related to long-necked reptiles such as "Macrocnemus", "Tanytrachelos", "Tanystropheus", or "Langobardisaurus".
Paleontology in Louisiana
Native peoples of Louisiana interpreted local mastodon fossils as the remains of monsters. They referred to the creatures as the grandfather of the buffalo. This subject was discussed in a 1748 letter from a French military officer named Fabri to Georges Cuvier. In 1804, such large fossil bones were discovered on land belonging to the Opelousa people. In 1816, the state's famous fossil site at Montgomery Landing was discussed in writing. It was not until 2004 that any dinosaur fossils were reported from Louisiana. The first such find was a single tooth reworked out of Cretaceous rocks and preserved in a Miocene-aged fossil deposit near Fort Polk. The dinosaur it came from probably lived, died, and was initially buried to the north in Arkansas. Later, it was eroded from Cretaceous sediments enclosing it and an ancestral Sabine River transported it southward to where it was found. The bones of Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, sometimes are found during the excavation of loess for fill or the construction of roads or buildings.The most famous fossil sites within Louisiana are Creola Bluff at Montgomery Landing Site in Grant Parish, Louisiana and the Cane River Site, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The Montgomery Landing Site was a long and high bluff that was the cutbank on the east side of the Red River. It exposed the top of the Cockfield Formation, the Moodys Branch Formation, and Tullos Member of the Yazoo Clay. The Moodys Branch Formation and Yazoo Clay were extremely fossiliferous with over a 100 species of invertebrate fossils and numerous species of vertebrate fossils, including one of the finest Eocene whale skulls known to science, having been found at this fossil site. Unfortunately, channelization of and construction along Red River has resulted in lower portions of the site being covered by sediment and the remaining exposures being completely covered by colluvium and overgrown by vegetation. As a result, fossils can no longer be found at this site. The Cane River Site is a low road-side cut made doing the construction of Interstate Highway 49 near Natchitoches, Louisiana. It exposes several feet of 44.5 to 46.5 Ma glauconitic silty clay belonging to the Cane River Formation. About 150 different species of marine invertebrate and vertebrate fossil have been found at this site. This site is slowly being destroyed by weathering and overgrown by vegetation.
Massospondylus
The first fossils of "Massospondylus" were described by paleontologist Sir Richard Owen in 1854. Originally, Owen did not recognize these finds as those of a dinosaur; instead he attributed them to "large, extinct, carnivorous reptiles" that were related to today's lizards, chameleons and iguanas. This material, a collection of 56 bones, was found in 1853 by the government surveyor Joseph Millard Orpen in the Upper Elliot Formation at Harrismith, South Africa and was donated to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Among the remains were vertebrae from the neck, back, and tail; a shoulder blade; a humerus; a partial pelvis; a femur; a tibia; and bones of the hands and feet. All these bones were found disarticulated, making it difficult to determine if all material belongs to a single species or not. However, Owen was able to distinguish three different types of caudal vertebrae, which he attributed to three different genera: "Pachyspondylus", "Leptospondylus" and "Massospondylus". "Massospondylus" was separated from the other two genera on the basis of its much longer caudal vertebrae, which also led to the scientific name that has been derived from the Greek terms "masson"/μάσσων 'longer' and "sphondylos"/σφόνδυλος 'vertebra'. However, later it was shown that the putative caudal vertebrae of "Massospondylus" were actually cervical vertebrae and that all the material probably belongs only to a single species. On May 10, 1941, the Hunterian Museum was demolished by a German bomb, destroying all the fossils; only casts remain.
Mosasaur
Mosasaur growth is not well understood, as specimens of juveniles are rare, and many were mistaken for hesperornithine birds when discovered 100 years ago. However, the discovery of several specimens of juvenile and neonate-sized mosasaurs unearthed more than a century ago indicate that mosasaurs gave birth to live young, and that they spent their early years of life out in the open ocean, not in sheltered nurseries or areas such as shallow water as previously believed. If, like other marine reptiles (such as plesiosaurs), mosasaurs provided parental care is currently unknown. The discovery of young mosasaurs was published in the journal "Palaeontology".
Nyasasaurus
"Nyasasaurus" is likely either a basal dinosaur or close to Dinosauria. Other phylogenetic analyses have indicated that the sister group to Dinosauria is a family of herbivorous dinosauriforms called Silesauridae. The fossil record of silesaurids dates back to the late Anisian (the silesaurid "Asilisaurus" is also known from the Manda Formation), suggesting that the first dinosaurs also appeared around this time. Before "Nyasasaurus" was recognized as a possible dinosaur, a long ghost lineage of approximately 16 million years existed between the earliest dinosaurs and earliest silesaurids.
Mosasaur
Despite the many mosasaur remains collected worldwide, knowledge of the nature of their skin coverings remains in its early stages. Few mosasaurid specimens collected from around the world retain fossilized scale imprints. This lack may be due to the delicate nature of the scales, which nearly eliminates the possibility of preservation, in addition to the preservation sediment types and the marine conditions under which the preservation occurred. Until the discovery of several mosasaur specimens with remarkably well-preserved scale imprints from late Maastrichtian deposits of the Muwaqqar Chalk Marl Formation of Harrana in Jordan, knowledge of the nature of mosasaur integument was mainly based on very few accounts describing early mosasaur fossils dating back to the upper Santonian–lower Campanian, such as the famous "Tylosaurus" specimen (KUVP-1075) from Gove County, Kansas. Material from Jordan has shown that the bodies of mosasaurs, as well as the membranes between their fingers and toes, were covered with small, overlapping, diamond-shaped scales resembling those of snakes. Much like those of modern reptiles, mosasaur scales varied across the body in type and size. In Harrana specimens, two types of scales were observed on a single specimen: keeled scales covering the upper regions of the body and smooth scales covering the lower. As ambush predators, lurking and quickly capturing prey using stealth tactics, they may have benefited from the nonreflective, keeled scales.
Mustelidae
The oldest fossil of the mustelids were dated at the end of the Oligocene to the beginning of the Miocene. “There is debate regarding which fossils from these epochs represent possible ancestral forms that led to Mustelidae and which fossils represent the first modern mustelids.”(Wund, M. 2005. "Mustelidae" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web.) From the fossil record we can see that Mustelids appeared in the late Oligocene period (33 mya) in Eurasia and migrated throughout the continents. The Mustelids inhabit every continent except Antarctica and Australia. The mustelids migrated all throughout the continents that were connected during the early Miocene. The Mustelids made their way to North and South America via the Bering land bridge.
Mauisaurus
"Mauisaurus" remains have all been found in New Zealand's South Island, near Canterbury. One "Mauisaurus" fossil was even found battling a mosasaur from the New Zealand region. "Mauisaurus gardneri" was described in 1877 based on cervical vertebrae and a humerus from the Gault Clay of Folkestone, but was later declared a "nomen vanum" in an overview of Cretaceous plesiosaurs published by Samuel Welles in 1962.
Pyroraptor
The first remains of "Pyroraptor" were discovered in southeastern France, at the La Boucharde locality of the Arc Basin in Provence. Finds of dromaeosaurid dinosaur remains are rare in Europe, and typically provide little taxonomic information. The first dromaeosaurid fossils found in France were those of "Variraptor", although the bones were previously referred to a new "Megalosaurus" species.
Dinosaur
Scholarly descriptions of what would now be recognized as dinosaur bones first appeared in the late 17th century in England. Part of a bone, now known to have been the femur of a "Megalosaurus", was recovered from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in 1676. The fragment was sent to Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and first curator of the Ashmolean Museum, who published a description in his "Natural History of Oxfordshire" in 1677. He correctly identified the bone as the lower extremity of the femur of a large animal, and recognized that it was too large to belong to any known species. He therefore concluded it to be the thigh bone of a giant human similar to those mentioned in the Bible. In 1699, Edward Lhuyd, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, was responsible for the first published scientific treatment of what would now be recognized as a dinosaur when he described and named a sauropod tooth, "Rutellum implicatum", that had been found in Caswell, near Witney, Oxfordshire.
Between 1815 and 1824, the Rev William Buckland, a professor of geology at Oxford, collected more fossilized bones of "Megalosaurus" and became the first person to describe a dinosaur in a scientific journal. The second dinosaur genus to be identified, "Iguanodon", was discovered in 1822 by Mary Ann Mantell – the wife of English geologist Gideon Mantell. Gideon Mantell recognized similarities between his fossils and the bones of modern iguanas. He published his findings in 1825.
Mosasaur
The first publicized discovery of a partial fossil mosasaur skull in 1764 by quarry workers in a subterranean gallery of a limestone quarry in Mount Saint Peter, near the Dutch city of Maastricht, preceded any major dinosaur fossil discoveries, but remained little known. However, a second find of a partial skull drew the Age of Enlightenment's attention to the existence of fossilized animals that were different from any known living creatures. When the specimen was discovered between 1770 and 1774, Johann Leonard Hoffmann, a surgeon and fossil collector, corresponded about it with the most influential scientists of his day, making the fossil famous. The original owner, though, was Godding, a canon of Maastricht cathedral.
Timeline of plesiosaur research
This timeline of plesiosaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, taxonomic revisions, and cultural portrayals of plesiosaurs, an order of marine reptiles that flourished during the Mesozoic Era. The first scientifically documented plesiosaur fossils were discovered during the early by Mary Anning. Plesiosaurs were actually discovered and described before dinosaurs. They were also among the first animals to be featured in artistic reconstructions of the ancient world, and therefore among the earliest prehistoric creatures to attract the attention of the lay public. Plesiosaurs were originally thought to be a kind of primitive transitional form between marine life and terrestrial reptiles. However, now plesiosaurs are recognized as highly derived marine reptiles descended from terrestrial ancestors.
Morden, Manitoba
Morden is home to the largest collection of marine reptile fossils in Canada, located at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre. Their collection includes a 13-metre-long mosasaur, approximately 80 million years old named Bruce - a Guinness Record holder as the largest mosasaur on public display in the world.
Titanosaur
Titanosaurs were widespread. In December 2011, Argentine scientists announced titanosaur fossils had been found on Antarctica—meaning that titanosaur fossils have been found on all continents. Four well-preserved skeletons of a titanosaur species were found in Italy, a discovery first reported on 2 May 2006. They are especially numerous in the southern continents (then part of the supercontinent of Gondwana). Australia had titanosaurs around 96 million years ago: fossils have been discovered in Queensland of a creature around long. Remains have also been discovered in New Zealand. One of the largest ever titanosaur footprints was discovered in the Gobi desert in 2016. One of the oldest remains of this group was found from the Valley of the Dinosaurs, Paraíba state of Brazil, representing a 136-million-year-old subadult individual.
Partridge Island (Nova Scotia)
Since 1970 when the American paleontologist Paul E. Olsen discovered a neck vertebra of a long-necked dinosaur known as a prosauropod near Parrsboro, the north shore of the Minas Basin has been recognized as an important source of fossils. In 1984, for example, amateur rock specialist Eldon George discovered the world's smallest dinosaur footprints at Wasson Bluff about 10 kilometres from Partridge Island. Then, in 1986, Olsen and two colleagues announced they had retrieved 100,000 fossilized bones including some belonging to the oldest dinosaurs ever found in Canada.
Timeline of mosasaur research
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 with mosasaur fossils for millennia. Before the development of paleontology as a formal science, these remains would have been interpreted through a mythological lens. Myths about warfare between serpentine water monsters and aerial thunderbirds told by the Native Americans of the modern western United States may have been influenced by observations of mosasaur fossils and their co-occurrence with creatures like "Pteranodon" and "Hesperornis".
Tenontosaurus
The first "Tenontosaurus" fossil was found in Big Horn County, Montana by an American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) expedition in 1903. Subsequent digs in the same area during the 1930s unearthed 18 more specimens, and four specimens were found during the 1940s. Despite the large number of fossil specimens, the animal was not named or scientifically described during this time, though Barnum Brown of the AMNH gave it the informal name "Tenantosaurus", "sinew lizard", in reference to the extensive system of stiffening tendons in its back and tail.
Koumpiodontosuchus
The first fossilised fragment of a skull was discovered by Diane Trevarthen on a beach near Sandown in the Isle of Wight in March 2011. Three months later, the second fragment of the skull was found by Austin and Finley Nathan. The two fragments were donated to Dinosaur Isle. The species that the fragments belonged to was named "Koumpiodontosuchus aprosdokiti", meaning "unexpected button-toothed crocodile".
Evolution of dinosaurs
The process leading up to the Dinosauromorpha and the first true dinosaurs can be followed through fossils of the early Archosaurs such as the Proterosuchidae, "Erythrosuchidae" and "Euparkeria" which have fossils dating back to 250 Ma, through mid-Triassic archosaurs such as "Ticinosuchus" 232-236 Ma. Crocodiles are also descendants of mid-Triassic archosaurs.
Nyctosauridae
Most nyctosaurid fossils have been found in formations dating to the late Cretaceous period of the western United States and Mexico. "Nyctosaurus" dates from 85-84.5 million years ago, in the Niobrara Formation of Kansas. "Muzquizopteryx" is the oldest nyctosaurid known from definitive remains, dating to the Turonian-Coniacian boundary, 85.8 million years ago, in Coahuila. However, a partial humerus with the distinctive nyctosaurid deltopectoral crest was found in Cornet, Romania, and identified as a possible European, early Cretaceous (late Berriasian age, about 140Ma ago) nyctosaurid by Gareth Dyke and colleagues in 2010.
Microbiotheria
The oldest microbiothere currently recognised is "Khasia cordillerensis", based on fossil teeth from Early Palaeocene deposits at Tiupampa, Bolivia. Numerous genera are known from various Palaeogene and Neogene fossil sites in South America. A number of possible microbiotheres, again represented by isolated teeth, have also been recovered from the Middle Eocene La Meseta Formation of Seymour Island, Western Antarctica. Finally, several undescribed microbiotheres have been reported from the Early Eocene Tingamarra Local Fauna in northeastern Australia; if this is indeed the case, then these Australian fossils have important implications for understanding marsupial evolution and biogeography. The distant ancestors of the monito del monte, it is thought, remained in what is now South America while others entered Antarctica and eventually Australia during the time when all three continents were joined as part of Gondwana.
Moschorhinus
The first "Moschorhinus" specimen was discovered by Mr. James Kitching in the Karoo Beds of South Africa, near a New Bethesda Road. It was first described by paleontologist Robert Broom in 1920, who published his observations through the Zoological Society of London.
Joan Wiffen
In 1975 Wiffen discovered the first dinosaur fossils in New Zealand in the Maungahounga Valley in Northern Hawkes Bay. Her first discovery was the tail bone of a theropod dinosaur. Her later finds included bones from a hypsilophodont, a pterosaur, an ankylosaur, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. In 1999, Wiffen discovered the vertebra bone of a titanosaur in a tributary of the Te Hoe River. The fossils Wiffen found are primarily held in a GNS Science collection.
East Windsor, Connecticut
In 1818, resident Solomon Ellsworth Jr, was blasting a hole for his well to go alongside of his house in town. While in the process, he found some foreign bones, not known at the time. These bones would last be sent to Yale University and would later determine to be Dinosaur fossils, specifically, one of a Anchisaurus. Though not the first fossils to be found, the discovery of the fossils led to the dinosaur discovery craze that occurred later on in the century as these were the first bones to be known as a dinosaur, four years before William Buckland determined it. The bones are still at Yale while the Ellsworth Homestead still stands on Rye Street near the South Windsor line.
Timeline of mosasaur research
The 20th century soon saw the discovery in Alabama of a strange mosasaur called "Globidens", with rounded teeth suited to crushing shells. Mosasaur remains were also discovered in Africa and California. In 1967 Dale Russell published a scientific monograph dedicated to mosasaurs. Embryonic remains in the 1990s confirmed that mosasaurs gave live birth like in ichthyosaurs. The 1990s also saw a revival and escalation of a debate regarding whether or not some supposed mosasaur toothmarks in ammonoid shells were actually made by limpets. By the end of the century, the evolutionary relationship between mosasaurs and snakes as well as the possible involvement of mosasaurs in the extinction of the aforementioned ichthyosaurs became hot button controversies.
Prehistory of the United States
The Late Triassic also saw the origin of the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs left behind abundant fossils in the Four Corners region and this area is now known as one of the best sources of Late Triassic dinosaur fossils in the United States. Texas is also good source of dinosaur remains from this time. The oldest dinosaur remains in the eastern US are about 225 million years old. So, dinosaurs had reached the east coast of the United States not long after they evolved in the first place. Fossil footprints are the most common kind of early dinosaur fossil in the eastern United States.
Lucianosaurus
Fossil remains of Lucianosaurus were first found in Late Triassic strata in Eastern New Mexico, United States. The generic name refers to Luciano Mesa () in Guadalupe and Quay counties of New Mexico where the teeth of Lucianosaurus were first uncovered and identified.
Compsognathidae
The first significant fossil specimen of Compsognathidae was found in the Bavaria region of Germany (BSP AS I 563) and given to collector Joseph Oberndorfer in 1859. The finding was initially significant because of the small size of the specimen. In 1861, after an initial period of review, Johann A. Wagner presented his analysis of the specimen to the public and named the fossil "Compsognathus longipes"( “elegant jaw”). In 1868, Thomas Henry Huxley, an explorer known for his travels with Charles Darwin and an early supporter of the theory of evolution, used "Compsognathus" in a comparison to similar feathered dinosaur "Archaeopteryx" in order to propose the origin of birds. While Huxley noticed that these dinosaurs shared a similar layout to birds and proposed an exploration of the similarities. He is credited as being the first person to do so. This initial comparison sparked the interest into the origin of birds and feathers. In 1882, Othniel Charles Marsh named a new family of dinosaurs for this species "Compsognathidae" and officially recognized the species as part of Dinosauria"."
Paleontology in Connecticut
In 1818, Solomon Ellsworth Jr. was blasting a well in East Windsor and uncovered some fossil bones about 18 feet under the surface of the rock. These are the first scientifically verified dinosaur bones discovered in North America. Two years later, Nathan Smith reported the fossils Ellsworth discovered to the "American Journal of Science", interpreting the fossils as human remains. In 1823 Professor Edward Hitchcock published research on Connecticut's fossil plants. In 1848 he wrote about the local tracks. By 1858, 38 different dinosaur track-bearing quarries were known in Connecticut but few additional finds would be made until the 1960s.
Aetosaur
Aetosaur fossils have been found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica, giving them a nearly worldwide distribution during the Late Triassic. Many aetosaur remains have been found from the Chinle Group in the southwestern United States. Most fossils have been found from Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some remains have also been found from Utah, particularly in Canyonlands National Park and Zion National Park. Aetosaurs are also known from the Newark Supergroup along the East Coast of the United States in states such as Connecticut and North Carolina. Two genera are known from Greenland: "Aetosaurus" and "Paratypothorax". They have been found from the Fleming Fjord Formation in Jameson Land. "Longosuchus" is the only aetosaur known from Africa, with scutes having been found from the late Carnian Timesgadiouine Formation in Morocco. During the Late Triassic, Morocco would have been in close proximity with the Newark Supergroup of North America in the supercontinent of Pangaea. It is also possible that "Desmatosuchus" was present in Africa, as fossils have been found from the Zarzaitine Series in Algeria that were referred to the genus.
Marcellus Formation
There are relatively sparse inclusions of fossilized marine fauna found in the Marcellus, but these fossils are still important to paleontology. For example, the Marcellus contains the oldest known diverse collection of thin-shelled mollusks still having well preserved shell microstructure.
It is also where goniatites, an extinct shelled swimmer similar to a squid, make their first appearance in the fossil record.
Life on land also enters the fossil record in the Marcellus, with the trunks of branchless conifer trees that floated out to sea to be preserved in the black shale.
Marasuchus
Until 2003 "Marasuchus" was thought to be one of the closest relatives of the dinosaurs. At present it has been supplanted by other dinosauromorphs such as "Silesaurus". Nonetheless, "Marasuchus" remains an important animal for understanding the origin and evolution of dinosaur characteristics. The following is a 
cladogram of basal Dinosauriformes according to Nesbitt (2011), and Dinosauria according to Baron "et al." (2017):
Alfred Romer first discovered fossils of the species in the 1960s in the Chañares Formation of the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin in northwestern Argentina, all parts of the reptile’s skeletal anatomy are known from fossils except for the skull and lower jaw. The formation was dated as being 235 to 234 million years old.
Mosasaurus
"Mosasaurus" was the first genus of mosasaurs to be named. The first remains known to science were a fragmentary skull from a chalk quarry in the St Pietersberg, a hill near Maastricht, the Netherlands, found in 1764 and collected by lieutenant Jean Baptiste Drouin in 1766. It was procured for the Teylers Museum at Haarlem in 1784 by Martinus van Marum, the first director of the museum, who published its description only in 1790. He considered it to be a species of "big breathing fish" ("Pisces cetacei", in other words: a whale). It is still part of the collection as TM 7424.
Dinosaur Ridge
The Dinosaur Ridge area is one of the world's most famous dinosaur fossil localities. In 1877, some of the best-known dinosaurs were found here, including "Stegosaurus", "Apatosaurus", "Diplodocus", and "Allosaurus". In 1973, the area was recognized for its uniqueness as well as its historical and scientific significance when it was designated the Morrison Fossil Area National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service. In 1989, the Friends of Dinosaur Ridge formed to address increasing concerns regarding the preservation of the site and to offer educational programs on the area's resources.
Paleontology in New Mexico
In 1947, an American Museum field party led by Edwin Harris Colbert discovered a bonebed including the skeletons of more than 1,000 "Coelophysis" at Ghost Ranch. Later, in 1953 University of New Mexico graduate student William Chenoweth discovered three important sites where dinosaurs were preserved in Morrison Formation rocks. He found a fragmentary "Allosaurus", sauropods, and "Stegosaurus". Three years later, in 1956, mastodon teeth were discovered by a nine-year-old boy who was out hunting for Indian arrowheads. These well preserved teeth are now curated by the University of New Mexico Museum. During the 1960s, uranium prospector Rodney Peterson discovered a new fossil site west of Albuquerque. Actual paleontological excavation at the site would be several decades away, however.
Paleontology in Kansas
In 1870, O. C. Marsh led a paleontological expedition into the western United States on behalf of Yale University. Late in the November of that year they visited the area around Fort Wallace. They spent several days prospecting for fossils in modern Wallace and Logan Counties along the banks of the Smoky Hill River. Persevering against cold weather, they made several finds. One was the nearly complete skeleton of the mosasaur "Clidastes" that took four days to excavate. Among the fossils discovered by Marsh's crew in western Kansas were the far ends of two pterosaur wing metacarpals. These were the first scientifically documented fossils of the pterosaur that would later be named "Pteranodon". This formal naming occurred six years later, in 1876.
Tahora Formation
Indeterminate dinosaur remains have been recovered from the formation, including indeterminate theropod, titanosaur, nodosaurid, and hypsilophodont remains. Other fossils found in the Tahora Formation are of the 40 foot long mosasaur "Moanasaurus" and "Rikkisaurus". The humerus of a pterosaur very similar to the Australian "Mythunga" has also been found.
New Zealand swan
The first fossil swan bones in New Zealand were recovered from Monck's Cave, Sumner, near Christchurch, in September 1889. The landowner Henry Monck had discovered bones which he presented to John T. Meeson and Henry Forbes, Director of the Canterbury Museum. They were found associated with moa and fish bones, seal hair, adzes, spears, and sinkers, indicating the swans were hunted by early Māori inhabitants of the cave. Forbes described the new swan species from three coracoids and two partial humeri, naming it "Chenopis sumnerensis", from its resemblance to the Australian black swan "Chenopis atrara" (now "Cygnus atratus") and from the type locality of Sumner. Forbes noted that "This Sumner cave has been closed since the introduction of "Chenopsis atrata" into New Zealand [in 1864–1868]" so the bones could not be from introduced black swans; he also noted that they were larger than those of the Australian species.
History of paleontology
In 1808, Cuvier identified a fossil found in Maastricht as a giant marine reptile that would later be named "Mosasaurus". He also identified, from a drawing, another fossil found in Bavaria as a flying reptile and named it "Pterodactylus". He speculated, based on the strata in which these fossils were found, that large reptiles had lived prior to what he was calling "the age of mammals". Cuvier's speculation would be supported by a series of finds that would be made in Great Britain over the course of the next two decades. Mary Anning, a professional fossil collector since age eleven, collected the fossils of a number of marine reptiles from the Jurassic marine strata at Lyme Regis. These included the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be recognized as such, which was collected in 1811, and the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found in 1821 and 1823. Many of her discoveries would be described scientifically by the geologists William Conybeare, Henry De la Beche, and William Buckland. It was Anning who observed that stony objects known as "bezoar stones" were often found in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons, and she noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilized fish bones and scales as well as sometimes bones from small ichthyosaurs. This led her to suggest to Buckland that they were fossilized feces, which he named coprolites, and which he used to better understand ancient food chains.
Camarasaurus
Dinosaur and trace fossils are found particularly in the Morrison Basin, which stretches from New Mexico to Alberta and Saskatchewan and was formed when the precursors to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains started pushing up to the west. Eroded material from their east-facing drainage basins was carried by streams and rivers and deposited in swampy lowlands, lakes, river channels and floodplains. The formation is similar in age to the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Germany and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. In 1877 it became the center of the Bone Wars, a fossil-collecting rivalry between early paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.
Mesosaurus
Clearly amniote-type fossil embryos of "Mesosaurus" in an advanced stage of development (i.e. fetuses) have been discovered in Uruguay and Brazil. These fossils are the earliest record of amniote fetuses, although amniotes are inferred to have had their typical reproductive strategy since their first appearance in the Late Carboniferous. Prior to their description, the oldest known amniote fetuses were from the Triassic. One isolated coiled fetus called FC-DPV 2504 is not surrounded by calcareous egg shells, suggesting that the glands in the oviduct of "Mesosaurus" and probably all paleozoic amniotes were not able to secrete calcium carbonate, in contrast to post-paleozoic archosaurs. This would explain the scarcity of egg fossils in the paleozoic amniote fossil record. One "Mesosaurus" specimen called MCN-PV 2214 comprises a medium-size adult with a small individual in its rib cage which is interpreted as a fetus ‘in utero’, even suggesting that "Mesosaurus" like many other marine reptiles, gave live birth. If this interpretation is correct, this specimen would represent the earliest known example of viviparity in the fossil record. The isolated fetus FC-DPV 2504, however, rather points to an ovoviviparous reproduction strategy in "Mesosaurus".
Ceratosaurus
The first specimen, the holotype USNM 4735, was discovered and excavated by farmer Marshall Parker Felch in 1883 and 1884. Found in articulation, with the bones still connected to each other, it was nearly complete, including the skull. Significant missing parts include an unknown number of vertebrae; all but the last ribs of the trunk; the humeri (upper arm bones); the distal finger bones of both hands; most of the right fore limb; most of the left hind limb; and most of the feet. The specimen was found encased in hard sandstone; the skull and spine had been heavily distorted during fossilization. The site of discovery, located in the Garden Park area north of Cañon City, Colorado, and known as the Felch Quarry 1, is regarded as one of the richest fossil sites of the Morrison Formation. Numerous dinosaur fossils had been recovered from this quarry even before the discovery of "Ceratosaurus", most notably a nearly complete specimen of "Allosaurus" (USNM 4734) in 1883 and 1884.
Gasosaurus
The first and to date only fossils, albeit postcranial (missing the skull), were recovered in 1985 during the construction of a gas facility, which explains the dinosaur's unusual name. It consists of laterally compressed teeth, 4 cervical, 7 dorsal, 5 sacral, and 7 caudal vertebrae, both humeri, and highly abraded and reconstructed pelvic and hind limb material that includes the left ilium, left ischium, left pubis, left femur, left tibia and left fibula. The fossils were defined as the type species "Gasosaurus constructus" by the paleontologists Dong Zhiming and Tang Zilu.
Mesosaur
Mesosaurs ("middle lizards") were a group of small aquatic reptiles that lived during the early Permian period, roughly 299 to 270 million years ago. Mesosaurs were the first known aquatic reptiles, having apparently returned to an aquatic lifestyle from more terrestrial ancestors. However, just how terrestrial mesosaur ancestors had become remains uncertain; recent research cannot establish with confidence if the first amniotes were fully terrestrial, or only amphibious. Most authors consider mesosaurs to have been aquatic, although adult animals may have been amphibious, rather than completely aquatic, as indicated by their moderate skeletal adaptations to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Similarly, their affinities are uncertain; they may be either the most basal sauropsids, or among the most basal parareptiles.
Pholidosauridae
Pholidosauridae is an extinct family of aquatic neosuchian mesoeucrocodylian crocodylomorphs. Fossils have been found in Europe (Denmark, England, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden), Africa (Algeria, Niger, Mali, Morocco and Tunisia), North America (Canada and the United States) and South America (Brazil and Uruguay). The pholidosaurids first appeared in the fossil record during the Bathonian stage of the Middle Jurassic and became extinct during the Late Turonian stage of the Late Cretaceous.
Paleontology in Massachusetts
Paleontology in Massachusetts refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The fossil record of Massachusetts is very similar to that of neighboring Connecticut. During the early part of the Paleozoic era, Massachusetts was covered by a warm shallow sea, where brachiopods and trilobites would come to live. No Carboniferous or Permian fossils are known from the state. During the Cretaceous period the area now occupied by the Elizabeth Islands and Martha's Vineyard were a coastal plain vegetated by flowers and pine trees at the edge of a shallow sea. No rocks are known of Paleogene or early Neogene age in the state, but during the Pleistocene evidence indicates that the state was subject to glacial activity and home to mastodons. The local fossil theropod footprints of Massachusetts may have been at least a partial inspiration for the Tuscarora legend of the Mosquito Monster or Great Mosquito in New York. Local fossils had already caught the attention of scientists by 1802 when dinosaur footprints were discovered in the state. Other notable discoveries include some of the first known fossil of primitive sauropodomorphs and "Podokesaurus". Dinosaur tracks are the Massachusetts state fossil.
Trevor H. Worthy
For years Worthy has been involved in the excavation of Miocene fossils (the Saint Bathans Fauna) from a prehistoric lake in Central Otago, including the oldest known moa bones, the oldest tuatara bones, and the first known fossil land mammal from New Zealand.
Amurosaurus
All fossils of "Amurosaurus" have been recovered from a single bonebed locality, discovered in 1984 within the city limits of Blagoveschensk in the Amur Oblast of far eastern Russia. This bonebed is found in the Udurchukan Formation, the oldest geologic formation in the Tsagayan Group of far eastern Russia and northeastern China. This formation is thought to belong to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, and was deposited about 68 million years ago, or just prior to the Lancian faunal stage of North America. The sediments were laid down in the floodplain of a river, which transported the fossils, but only a short distance, judging by the randomly assorted, disarticulated, but well-preserved bones within the bonebed, including fragile skull elements. Only a small section of the bonebed has been uncovered, but 90% of the remains found so far belong to lambeosaurines like "Amurosaurus", mostly juveniles, with the rest belonging to other taxa, such as the hadrosaurine "Kerberosaurus". Theropod teeth are also abundant, and there are many toothmarks on the bones, made by predators or scavengers.
Besanosaurus
The bones of "Besanosaurus" were first discovered in "Sasso Caldo" quarry in the spring of 1993 by the volunteers of the paleontological group of Besano, a small town in the Lombardy region of north Italy. The fossil was almost completely embedded in the rock and could be first seen only through x-rays; to detect the content of the 38 slabs of stone enclosing the skeleton, 145 radiographs were necessary. The skeleton of "Besanosaurus" came to light in the paleontological laboratory of Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano after 16500 hours of preparation. The preparators removed the rock enclosing the fossil step by step, working under a stereo microscope with chisels, needles and pins. The 38 slabs were reassembled and a silicon rubber matrix was made, from which a cast of the original specimen was obtained.
Plioplatecarpus
"Plioplatecarpus" was first found in Europe by paleontologist Louis Dollo ("P. marshi"), in 1882. It was relatively incomplete, but more fossils would soon turn up. In North America, Edward Drinker Cope found another mosasaur in 1869, but had identified it as "Mosasaurus". It would later be reclassified as "Plioplatecarpus", as would Cope's "Liodon", in 1870. "Liodon" would be reclassified as "Platecarpus", and later as "Prognathodon". However, some have placed it in the genus "Plioplatecarpus".
Mary Anning
Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. She nearly died in 1833 during a landslide that killed her dog, Tray. Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified; the first two more complete plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted "Duria Antiquior", the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit.
Ghost Ranch
200 million years ago Ghost Ranch and the American Southwest were located close to the equator, and had a warm, monsoon-like climate with heavy seasonal precipitation. Ghost Ranch includes a famous palaeontological site preserving Triassic dinosaurs. Fossil bones were found here as early as 1885. In 1947 the palaeontologist Edwin H. Colbert documented the discovery of over a thousand well-preserved fossilized skeletons of a small Triassic dinosaur called "Coelophysis" in a quarry here. In 2007, fossil remains of "Dromomeron romeri", one of the archaic group of animals recognized as basal dinosauromorphs, were found in the Hayden Quarry. In April 2010, a team of scientists led by Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery of "Daemonosaurus chauliodus", a basal theropod species, at Ghost Ranch. "Daemonosaurus" lived approximately 205 million years ago, during a transitional period between the oldest known dinosaurs such as "Herrerasaurus", which existed during the Late Triassic period in what is now known as Argentina and Brazil, and the more advanced theropod dinosaurs.
Hypsibema missouriensis
Remains of "Hypsibema missouriensis" were first discovered in Bollinger County, Missouri by members of the Chronister family while they were digging a cistern, and were subsequently collected by Stewart, later nicknamed "Dinosaur Dan." In 1942, Stewart, of the Missouri Geological Survey, had been examining clay near Glen Allen when he came upon a boy who led him to the family at work digging. According to Stewart, property owner Lulu Chronister had found several "unusual" bones while digging and had saved them. They had been found about deep in the Chronisters' well, which had an overall depth of , "imbedded in a black plastic clay." Stewart reported his discovery to the Smithsonian Institution, which bought the remains—thirteen vertebrae of a dinosaur's tail—from Chronister for US$50, which was later used to purchase a cow. Two other bones, of unknown type, were also recovered from the site, while one additional vertebrae had been given by Lulu Chronister to a friend. At the Smithsonian, the bones were analyzed but the species from which they originated was incorrectly identified.
Dinosaur National Monument
The dinosaur fossil beds (bone beds) were discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working and collecting for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He and his crews excavated thousands of fossils and shipped them back to the museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for study and display. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the dinosaur beds as Dinosaur National Monument in 1915. The monument boundaries were expanded in 1938 from the original tract surrounding the dinosaur quarry in Utah, to its present extent of over 200,000 acres (800 km²) in Utah and Colorado, encompassing the spectacular river canyons of the Green and Yampa.
Betasuchus
Its fossil, holotype BMNH 42997 (now NHM R 42997), a part of a right femur, 312 mm long, was found in the Netherlands near Maastricht, and originally described as a new species of "Megalosaurus" in 1883 by Harry Seeley: "M. bredai", honouring the late Dutch biologist and geologist Jacob Gijsbertus Samuël van Breda, a director of the Teylers Museum, who had collected the fossil at some time between 1820 and 1860 from the chalkstone quarry at the St Pietersberg. Van Breda did not excavate the remains himself but bought them from quarry workers who in this period dug stone from tunnels at several levels in the mountain; it is therefore impossible to determine the exact temporal horizon, apart from a general Maastrichtian; however all dinosaurian material from the formation that could be dated, stems from the latest Maastrichtian, 67-66 million years old. Only the top part of the femur has been conserved; of the distal end about eight centimetres are missing as the bone was cleanly cut in two when the chalk block containing it was sawed out. Other saw cuts damaged the head of the thigh bone. The fossil was part of his personal collection, not the museum's, and sold to the British Museum of Natural History after his death in 1867. In 1892 Belgian/Dutch/German paleontologist Johan Casimir Ubaghs referred some teeth — probably of mosasaurs — to "M. bredai". "Megalosaurus bredai" was in 1883 the first terrestrial vertebrate named from Maastrichtian layers.
Mosasaur
When the French revolutionary forces occupied Maastricht in 1794, the carefully hidden fossil was uncovered, after a reward, it is said, of 600 bottles of wine, and transported to Paris. After it had been earlier interpreted as a fish, a crocodile, and a sperm whale, the first to understand its lizard affinities was the Dutch scientist Adriaan Gilles Camper in 1799. In 1808, Georges Cuvier confirmed this conclusion, although "le Grand Animal fossile de Maëstricht" was not actually named "Mosasaurus" ('Meuse reptile') until 1822 and not given its full species name, "Mosasaurus hoffmannii," until 1829. Several sets of mosasaur remains, that had been discovered earlier at Maastricht but were not identified as mosasaurs until the 19th century, have been on display in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, procured from 1790.
Prognathodon
On September 19, 2012, it was announced that nine days earlier, again a skeleton of what appears to be a Mosasaur was found in the limestone quarry just outside Maastricht, the same quarry that yielded the type specimen of "Mosasaurus hoffmanni". Carlo Brauer, an excavator operator at the ENCI quarry, discovered the teeth of the fossil in the shovel of his digger on Monday morning, September 10. In the days following the discovery, museum staff retrieved several large sections of the skull and part of the body and tail of the approximately 13-metre long skeleton. Based on stratigraphy, the age of the specimen was estimated at 67.83 million years, making it about one-and-a-half million years older than "Bèr". From what has been uncovered, this appears to be the oldest known Mosasaurid specimen from the Maastricht area, and it belongs to the genus "Prognathodon". The specimen is nicknamed Carlo, after the ENCI worker who discovered it.
Mastodon
The first remnant of "Mammut", a tooth some in weight, was discovered in the village of Claverack, New York, in 1705. The mystery animal became known as the "incognitum". The first bones to be collected and studied scientifically were found in 1739 at Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky, by French soldiers, who carried them to the Mississippi River, from where they were transported to the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Some time later, similar teeth were found in South Carolina, which, according to the slaves, looked remarkably similar to those of African elephants. This was soon followed by discoveries of complete bones and tusks in Ohio; people started referring to the "incognitum" as a mammoth, like the ones that were being dug out in Siberia. Anatomists noted that the teeth of mammoth and elephants were different from those of the "incognitum", which possessed rows of large conical cusps, indicating that they were dealing with a distinct species. In 1806 the French anatomist Georges Cuvier named the incognitum "mastodon".
Mosopia
Mosopia is a genus of moths of the Noctuidae family. It is found in south-east Asia, including Thailand, Borneo and Malaysia. The genus was first described by Francis Walker in 1866 from a specimen in the British Museum. The specimen Walker describes was from Penang in Malaysia.
Feathered dinosaur
One of the earliest discoveries of possible feather impressions by non-avian dinosaurs is an ichnofossil ("Fulicopus lyellii") of the 195-199 million year old Portland Formation in the northeastern United States. Gierlinski (1996, 1997, 1998) and Kondrat (2004) have interpreted traces between two footprints in this fossil as feather impressions from the belly of a squatting dilophosaurid. Although some reviewers have raised questions about the naming and interpretation of this fossil, if correct, this early Jurassic fossil is the oldest known evidence of feathers, almost 30 million years older than the next-oldest-known evidence.
After a century of hypotheses without conclusive evidence, well-preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s, and more continue to be found. The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte—a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils—in Liaoning, China. The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous epoch. The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail. The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves, angiosperms (the oldest known), insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, and lizards discovered to date.
Courtenay, British Columbia
The first major paleontological discovery in Courtenay occurred in 1988 when resident Mike Trask and his daughter discovered the first fossil of an 80-million-year-old Elasmosaur on the banks of the Puntledge River. Over the next few months, the excavation, led by Dr. Roif Ludvigson, revealed a near complete skeleton. The skull and other key bones for identifying the species were in poor condition, and it is still unknown as to what species or genus this Elasmosaur belonged. The original bones and a replica model are on display at the Courtenay & District Museum and Paleontology Center.
Plesiosaurus
The first complete skeleton of "Plesiosaurus" was discovered by early paleontologist and fossil hunter Mary Anning in Sinemurian (Early Jurassic)-age rocks of the lower Lias Group in December 1823. Additional fossils of "Plesiosaurus" were found in rocks of the Lias Group of Dorset for many years, "until the cessation of quarrying activities in the Lias Group, early in this [20th] century."
Mosasaur
Many of the so-called 'dinosaur' remains found on New Zealand are actually mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, both being Mesozoic predatory marine reptiles.
Timeline of mosasaur research
By this time the first mosasaur fossils from the United States were discovered by the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the first remains in the country to be scientifically described were reported slightly later from New Jersey. This was followed by an avalanche of discoveries by the feuding Bone War paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the Smoky Hill Chalk of Kansas. By the end of the century a specimen of "Tylosaurus" would be found that preserved its scaley skin. Later Samuel Wendell Williston mistook fossilized tracheal rings for the remains of a fringe of skin running down the animal’s back, which subsequently became a common inaccuracy in artistic restorations.
Mussaurus
Mussaurus (meaning "mouse lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived in southern Argentina during the Late Triassic, about 215 million years ago. It receives its name from the small size of the skeletons of juvenile and infant individuals, which were once the only known specimens of the genus. However, since "Mussaurus" is now known from adult specimens, the name is something of a misnomer; adults possibly reached 3 m (10 ft) in length, and weighed . "Mussaurus" possesses anatomical features suggesting a close, possibly transitional evolutionary relationship with true sauropods.
Deinonychus
The first remains were uncovered in 1931 in southern Montana near the town of Billings. The team leader, paleontologist Barnum Brown, was primarily concerned with excavating and preparing the remains of the ornithopod dinosaur "Tenontosaurus", but in his field report from the dig site to the American Museum of Natural History, he reported the discovery of a small carnivorous dinosaur close to a "Tenontosaurus" skeleton, "but encased in lime difficult to prepare." He informally called the animal "Daptosaurus agilis" and made preparations for describing it and having the skeleton, specimen AMNH 3015, put on display, but never finished this work. Brown brought back from the Cloverly Formation the skeleton of a smaller theropod with seemingly oversized teeth that he informally named "Megadontosaurus". John Ostrom, reviewing this material decades later, realized that the teeth came from "Deinonychus", but the skeleton came from a completely different animal. He named this skeleton "Microvenator".
Microbiotheriidae
The oldest microbiotheriid and microbiothere currently recognised is "Khasia cordillerensis", based on fossil teeth from Early Palaeocene deposits at Tiupampa, Bolivia. Numerous genera are known from various Palaeogene and Neogene fossil sites in South America. A number of possible microbiotheres, again represented by isolated teeth, have also been recovered from the Middle Eocene La Meseta Formation of Seymour Island, Western Antarctica. Finally, several undescribed microbiotheres have been reported from the Early Eocene Tingamarra Local Fauna in northeastern Australia; if this is indeed the case, then these Australian fossils have important implications for understanding marsupial evolution and biogeography. The distant ancestors of the monito del monte, it is thought, remained in what is now South America while others entered Antarctica and eventually Australia during the time when all three continents were joined as part of Gondwana.
Mosasaur
Early reconstructions showed mosasaurs with dorsal crests running the length of their bodies, which were based on misidentified remains of tracheal cartilage. By the time this error was discovered, depicting mosasaurs with such crests in artwork had already become a trend.
Bollinger County, Missouri
Sixty million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the area that would eventually become known as Bollinger County. The "Missouri Dinosaur," a hadrosaur (duck-billed), was discovered at a dig near Glen Allen. It has produced bones from different dinosaurs and aquatic species.
Mosasaurus
In 1798 Faujas de Saint-Fond published his "Histoire naturelle de la montagne de Saint-Pierre de Maestricht [Tome 1]", which also contained an account of the circumstances of the find. According to him, Dr. Hoffmann paid the quarrymen to inform him of any fossil finds. When the skull was found in 1770 Hoffmann was notified by the quarrymen and he is said to have led the excavation from then on. Afterwards, Godding would have claimed his rights as landowner and forced Hoffmann to relinquish his ownership through a lawsuit, won by influencing the court. De Saint-Fond, after all, in 1795, saved the specimen for science, promising a considerable indemnity to Godding to compensate for his loss. However, as Dutch historian Peggy Rompen has illustrated, very little of this famous story can be substantiated by other sources. Godding was the original owner, Hoffmann clearly never possessed the fossil, there is no trace of any lawsuit, Faujas de Saint-Fond probably never paid anything, and the entire account seems to have been fabricated by him to justify the dispossession by military force.
Subfossil lemur
Subfossil remains were first discovered on Madagascar in the 1860s, but giant lemur species were not formally described until the 1890s. The paleontological interest sparked by the initial discoveries resulted in an overabundance of new species names, the allocation of bones to the wrong species, and inaccurate reconstructions during the early 20th century. Discoveries waned during the mid-20th century; paleontological work resumed in the 1980s and resulted in the discovery of new species and a new genus. Research has recently focused on diets, lifestyle, social behavior, and other aspects of biology. The remains of the subfossil lemurs are relatively recent, with all or most species dating within the last 2,000 years. Humans first arrived on Madagascar around that time and hunting likely played a role in the rapid decline of the lemurs and the other megafauna that once existed on the large island. Additional factors are thought to have contributed to their ultimate disappearance. Oral traditions and recent reports of sightings by Malagasy villagers have been interpreted by some as suggesting either lingering populations or very recent extinctions.
Mahisagar district
In the early 1980s, palaeontologists stumbled upon dinosaur bones and fossils during a regular geological survey of Balasinor (originally in Kheda District, currently in Mahisagar after formation of the district in 2013), later identified as "Rajasaurus narmadensis" (Latin for "princely lizard from the Narmada Valley". It was the first dinosaur fossil discovery in India.
Dinosaur
In 1858, William Parker Foulke discovered the first known American dinosaur, in marl pits in the small town of Haddonfield, New Jersey. (Although fossils had been found before, their nature had not been correctly discerned.) The creature was named "Hadrosaurus foulkii". It was an extremely important find: "Hadrosaurus" was one of the first nearly complete dinosaur skeletons found (the first was in 1834, in Maidstone, England), and it was clearly a bipedal creature. This was a revolutionary discovery as, until that point, most scientists had believed dinosaurs walked on four feet, like other lizards. Foulke's discoveries sparked a wave of dinosaur mania in the United States.
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).
Amphitherium
The first jaws of mammals from the Mesozoic - including "Amphitherium" - were found in the Stonesfield Slate, part of the Forest Marble Formation at Kirtlington Quarry in England . These were bought by a student of William Buckland's. Although he thought the jaws were mammalian, he asked the great anatomist Georges Cuvier for his opinion. He misidentified them as being from a marsupial mammal, "Didelphis". Later they were identified as being a new genus, and named "Amphitherium". It was first mentioned in the scientific literature alongside "Megalosaurus", by the famous British paleontologist Reverend William Buckland. It came from the Stonesfield Slate of Oxfordshire, England, and Buckland described it in 1824 as ""not less extraordinary"" than the dinosaur, but it was the larger fossil reptile that captured public imagination.
Timeline of mosasaur research
Russell also published additional information and speculation on mosasaur biostratigraphy. He reported the presence of mosasaur vertebrae up to 90 million years old among the Turonian fossils curated by the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. Another of this work's significant contributions to mosasaur biostratigraphy concerned the mosasaurs of the Smoky Hill Chalk. Russell devised two biostratigraphic zones based on the Chalk's mosasaur fossils. The lower zone was characterized by "Clidastes liodontus", "Platecarpus coryphaeus", and "Tylosaurus nepaeolicus". The upper was home to "Clidastes", "Platecarpus ictericus", and "Tylosaurus proriger". He regarded "Platecarpus" and "Tylosaurus" as deep water animals but concluded that the biostratigraphic evidence from the Smoky Hill mosasaurs suggested that the Chalk's depositional environment was becoming shallower and nearer to the ancient coastline over time. Russell also argued that by the end of the Late Cretaceous, mosasaurs were converging on the body plan that characterized the first ichthyosaurs during the Triassic period and gradually replacing these older marine reptiles.
Johann Leonard Hoffmann
Johann Leonard Hoffmann (1710–1782) was a Maastricht army surgeon and amateur geologist who collected fossils from the local Mount Saint Peter. He is known for fossils named after him, and was one of the three people contacted on the discovery of the Mosasaurus in 1766, and especially the second one in the 1770s known as "le grand animal", that was later taken to Paris by Napoleon's army in 1794.
Psittacosaurus
"Psittacosaurus" was first described as a genus in 1923, by Henry Fairfield Osborn. He named the type species "P. mongoliensis", for the location of its discovery in Mongolia, placing it in the new family Psittacosauridae. Remains of this dinosaur were first discovered the year before, on the third American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, when one of the expedition's drivers, Wong, found the type specimen (AMNH 6254), which preserves a nearly complete skull, as well as a post cranial skeleton lacking sections of the limbs. This same expedition turned up the remains of many other famous Mongolian dinosaurs, including "Protoceratops", "Oviraptor", and "Velociraptor". Many later expeditions by various combinations of Mongolian, Russian, Chinese, American, Polish, Japanese, and Canadian paleontologists also recovered specimens from throughout Mongolia and northern China. In these areas, "Psittacosaurus mongoliensis" fossils are found in most sedimentary strata dating to the Aptian to Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous Period, or approximately 125 to 100 mya. Fossil remains of over 75 individuals have been recovered, including nearly 20 complete skeletons with skulls. Individuals of all ages are known, from hatchlings less than long, to very old adults reaching nearly in length.
Jack Horner (paleontologist)
In Montana during the mid-1970s, Horner and his research partner Bob Makela discovered a colonial nesting site of a new dinosaur genus which they named "Maiasaura", or "Good Mother Lizard". The dinosaur bones, originating from a juvenile, were first discovered by Marion Brandvold. Horner then studied the bones, and at first, there was a refusal to return the bones to Brandvold. It contained the first dinosaur eggs in the Western hemisphere, the first dinosaur embryos, and settled questions of whether some dinosaurs were sociable, built nests and cared for their young. The discovery established Horner's career. He has named several other species of dinosaur (including "Orodromeus makelai," in memory of his late friend Bob Makela) and has had three named after himself: "Achelousaurus horneri", "Anasazisaurus horneri", and "Daspletosaurus horneri".
Within the paleontological community, Horner is best known for his work on dinosaur growth research. He has published numerous articles in collaboration with Berkeley paleontologist Kevin Padian, and French dinosaur histologist Armand de Ricqlès, on the growth of dinosaurs using growth series. This usually involves leg bones in graduated sizes from different individuals ranging in age from embryos to adults. Horner also revitalized the contested theory that "Tyrannosaurus rex" was an obligate scavenger, rather than a predatory killer. While this theory has been widely discussed by the popular press, it has never been a major research focus for Horner. He claimed that he never published the scavenger hypothesis in the peer reviewed scientific literature, stating that it was mainly a tool for him to teach a popular audience, particularly children, of the dangers of making assumptions in science (such as assuming "T. rex" was a hunter) without using evidence. In 2000, teams led by Horner discovered five specimens of "T. rex" and three more the following summer, including one larger than the specimen nicknamed "Sue". The new fossil was 10–13 tons in weight and 10% larger than other specimens. The Museum of the Rockies, as the result of continuing fieldwork, now exhibits the largest "Tyrannosaurus rex" collection in the world. Currently, Horner is working on the developmental biology of dinosaurs.
Mesozoic
The Early Jurassic spans from 200 to 175 million years ago. The climate was tropical, much more humid than the Triassic. In the oceans, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and ammonites were abundant. On land, dinosaurs and other archosaurs staked their claim as the dominant race, with theropods such as "Dilophosaurus" at the top of the food chain. The first true crocodiles evolved, pushing the large amphibians to near extinction. All-in-all, archosaurs rose to rule the world. Meanwhile, the first true mammals evolved, remaining relatively small but spreading widely; the Jurassic "Castorocauda", for example, had adaptations for swimming, digging and catching fish. "Fruitafossor", from the late Jurassic period about 150 million years ago, was about the size of a chipmunk, and its teeth, forelimbs and back suggest that it dug open the nests of social insects (probably termites, as ants had not yet appeared). The first multituberculates like "Rugosodon" evolved, while volaticotherians took to the skies.
Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve
The first fossil to be found in the area, "Fractofusus misrai", was discovered in June 1967 by Shiva Balak Misra, an Indian graduate student studying geology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The site became quickly recognized in the mid-1980s as an important find containing probably the oldest metazoan fossils in North America and the most ancient deep-water marine fossils in the world. a A 5 kilometer stretch of coastline was first established provisionally as a reserve by the provincial government in 1984 and was permanently designated in 1987. It was later expanded in 2009 after further fossil discoveries.
Prehistory of the United States
The stratigraphic unit known as the Morrison Formation was deposited during the Late Jurassic. These sediments are now exposed in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana. At the time, this region of the country was home to forests of conifers, ginkgos, and tree ferns. Coal would later form from the remains of these plants. Local mammals diversified significantly during the Jurassic. The Morrison Formation is the best source of Jurassic mammal fossils in North America. Local dinosaurs included the ornithopod "Camptosaurus", the sauropods "Apatosaurus" and "Diplodocus", and the theropod "Allosaurus". Unlike many periods of geologic history the Jurassic did not end in a mass extinction. There were, however, lesser extinction events going on at the time, with notable losses occurring among ammonoids and dinosaurs.
Timeline of mosasaur research
The scientific study of mosasaurs began in the late 18th century with the serendipitous discovery of a large fossilized skeleton in a limestone mine near Maastricht in the Netherlands. The fossils were studied by local scholar Adriaan Gilles Camper, who noted a resemblance to modern monitor lizards in correspondence with renowned French anatomist Georges Cuvier. Nevertheless, the animal was not scientifically described until the English Reverend William Daniel Conybeare named it "Mosasaurus", after the river Meuse located near the site of its discovery.
Castorocauda
The fossil was from the Daohugou Beds of the Inner Mongolia region of China. Fossils of pterosaurs, lissamphibians, coelurosaurian dinosaurs, and numerous invertebrates have also been unearthed in the same formation.
Moose
The earliest known species is "Libralces gallicus" (French moose), which lived in the Pliocene epoch, about 2 million years ago. "Libralces gallicus" came from the warm savannahs of Pliocene Europe, with the best preserved skeletons being found in southern France. "L. gallicus" was 1.25 times larger than the Alaskan moose in linear dimensions, making it nearly twice as massive. "L. gallicus" had many striking differences from its modern descendants. It had a longer, narrower snout and a less-developed nasal cavity, more resembling that of a modern deer, lacking any sign of the modern moose-snout. Its face resembled that of the modern wapiti. However, the rest of its skull structure, skeletal structure and teeth bore strong resemblance to those features that are unmistakable in modern moose, indicating a similar diet. Its antlers consisted of a horizontal bar long, with no tines, ending in small palmations. Its skull and neck structure suggest an animal that fought using high-speed impacts, much like the Dall sheep, rather than locking and twisting antlers the way modern moose combat. Their long legs and bone structure suggest an animal that was adapted to running at high speeds over rough terrain.
Paleontology in Connecticut
The first scientifically verified dinosaur bones discovered in North America were uncovered during the 1818 excavation of a well in Connecticut. Other notable finds include the aetosaur "Stegomus", the phytosaur "Clepsysaurus", and the prosauropod dinosaur "Anchisaurus". The Jurassic dinosaur track "Eubrontes giganteus" is the Connecticut state fossil.
Monotreme
The fossil record of monotremes is relatively sparse. The first Mesozoic monotreme to be discovered was "Steropodon galmani" from Lightning Ridge, New South Wales. Although biochemical and anatomical evidence suggests that the monotremes diverged from the mammalian lineage before the marsupials and placental mammals arose, only a handful of monotreme fossils are known from before the Miocene epoch. The known Mesozoic monotremes are "Steropodon" and "Teinolophos", all from Australian deposits in the Cretaceous, so monotremes had already diversified by that time. A platypus tooth has been found in the Palaeocene of Argentina, so one hypothesis is that monotremes arose in Australia in the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous, and that some migrated across Antarctica to South America, both of which were still united with Australia at that time.; however, several genetic studies suggest an origin in the Triassic.
Montanoceratops
The first fossil remains of what we now know as "Montanoceratops" were discovered on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, west of Buffalo Lake, Montana in the St. Mary River Formation. It was collected in 1916 by Barnum Brown and Peter C. Kaisen of the American Museum of Natural History from terrestrial sediments that were deposited during the Maastrichtian stages of the Cretaceous period, approximately 70 million years ago. After having mounted a reconstruction in 1935, Brown and his assistant Erich Maren Schlaikjer named it in 1942 as a new species of "Leptoceratops": "Leptoceratops cerorhynchos"; this is the type species of "Montanoceratops". The genus name "Montanoceratops", means "Montana horned face", and is derived from the state of Montana, which is the site of the discovery of the holotype specimen, and the Greek words "keras" (κερας) meaning "horn", and "ops" (ωψ) meaning "face". The type and only valid species known today is "Montanoceratops cerorhynchos".
List of North American dinosaurs
The earliest record of dinosaurs in North America comes from rare, unidentified (possibly theropod) footprints and teeth in the Middle-Late Triassic Pekin Formation of North Carolina. Later in the Triassic period, dinosaurs left more recognizable remains, and could thus be identified as specific genera. Examples of later Triassic North American dinosaur genera include "Coelophysis", "Chindesaurus", "Gojirasaurus", and "Tawa". Fossils of "Tawa"-like dinosaurs have also been found in South America, which has important indications about paleogeography. During the Early Jurassic Period, dinosaurs such as "Dilophosaurus", "Anchisaurus", "Coelophysis" (formerly known as "Megapnosaurus"), and the early thyreophoran "Scutellosaurus" lived in North America. The latter is believed to have been the ancestor of all stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. The Middle Jurassic is the only poorly represented time period in North America, although several Middle Jurassic localities are known from Mexico. Footprints, eggshells, teeth, and fragments of bone representing theropods, sauropods, and ornithopods have been found, but none of them are diagnostic to the genus level. 
The Late Jurassic of North America, however, is the exact opposite of the Middle Jurassic. The Late Jurassic Morrison Formation is found in several U.S. states, including Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. It is notable as being the most fertile single source of dinosaur fossils in the world. The roster of dinosaurs from the Morrison is impressive. Among the theropods, "Allosaurus", "Saurophaganax", "Torvosaurus", "Ceratosaurus", "Coelurus", "Ornitholestes", "Tanycolagreus", "Stokesosaurus", and "Marshosaurus" are found in the Morrison. An abundance of sauropods has been found there, including "Apatosaurus", "Diplodocus", "Barosaurus", "Brachiosaurus", "Camarasaurus", "Brontosaurus" and "Amphicoelias". Three genera of stegosaurs, "Alcovasaurus", "Stegosaurus" and "Hesperosaurus", have been found there. Finally, ornithopods found in the Morrison include "Dryosaurus", "Camptosaurus", "Drinker", "Othnielia", and "Othnielosaurus".
List of North American dinosaurs
The only dinosaur fossil from Central America is a femur of a ornithopod., discovered in the central part of Honduras in the year 1971 near San Luis, Comayagua Department, by Bruce Simonson and Gregory Horne. It was found in the highest part of the Valle de Angeles Redbeds. The fossil bone is in the US National Museum of Natural History in Washington (catalog number USNM PAL 181339). It was identified as ornithopod bone by John Ostrom, and by Nicholas Hotton as the right femur of a small hadrosaur.
Pliosauridae
Pliosauridae is a family of plesiosaurian marine reptiles from the Earliest Jurassic to the early Late Cretaceous (Hettangian to Turonian stages) of Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Past the Turonian, they may have been replaced by the mosasaurs. It was formally named by Harry G. Seeley in 1874.
Platecarpus
Various skeletons of this mosasaur have been found in Cretaceous deposits in Kansas, but only one complete skull has ever been recovered. "Platecarpus" fossils have been found in rocks that date back to the late Coniacian through the early Campanian in the Smoky Hill Chalk.