{"id":498625,"date":"2026-05-23T06:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/498625\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T06:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:05:11","slug":"exclusive-theres-a-new-t-rex-in-town-and-this-giant-beast-ruled-the-seas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/498625\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: There\u2019s a new T. rex in town\u2014and this giant beast ruled the seas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cTylosaurs are already notorious for being one of the largest-sized mosasaurs that ever lived,\u201d says <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/eeb.princeton.edu\/people\/tiago-r-sim%C3%B5es\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tiago Sim\u00f5es<\/a>, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. \u201cI think this study further supports that, making them the largest group of mosasaurs that ever lived.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">In addition to describing the new species, Zietlow and her team also assembled a comprehensive dataset on mosasaur anatomy, updating the older, rickety version from scratch with head-to-tail measurements of 300 mosasaur specimens and modern lizards<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cI hope people are able to use it and give tylosaurs the attention I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve had,\u201d says Zietlow.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Measuring sea monsters<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The first known Tylosaurus species, T. proriger (\u201cprow-bearing knob lizard\u201d), was named 150 years ago for the battering-ram-like tips of its jaws. At around 30 feet long, \u201cit was the largest North American mosasaur known for quite some time,\u201d says <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/profile\/Michael-Polcyn\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Polcyn<\/a>, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University and an author on the study. \u201cBecause the snout was so easily recognizable, people could differentiate it easily from other mosasaurs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">While paleontologists have described other species of Tylosaurus over the years, most of the specimens found in the 84-million-year-old rocks of Kansas are assigned to T. proriger. By custom, several giant specimens originally found in the 80-million-year-old rocks around Dallas, Texas, including a large one now mounted at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, were also given this classification.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTylosaurs are already notorious for being one of the largest-sized mosasaurs that ever lived,\u201d says Tiago Sim\u00f5es, an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[18,19,17,171864,133,166792,216850,216174,216176,461],"class_list":["post-498625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mosasaur","tag-science","tag-t-rex","tag-tylosaur","tag-tylosaurus","tag-tylosaurus-rex","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}