Whoever said everything is bigger in Texas probably wasn’t thinking about teeth, but a recent fossil find in the Lone Star State shows how large some chompers could get. The complete jawbones belonged to a Globidens alabamensis, a sea predator that first emerged around 85 million years ago.
While Globidens, which are members of the mosasaur family, were first described in 1912, the intact condition of the find is rare, allowing paleontologists to get a better view of how these prehistoric carnivores were able to attack and eat their prey.
The discovery was made in a region of northeastern Texas known as the Ozan Formation by a fossil hunter named Courtney Travanini. She loaned the teeth to a team of scientists, which included University of Alberta paleontologist Brennan Martens. They analyzed the bones, which they described in the resulting paper, published in The Journal of Paleontological Sciences.
On the left side, six teeth are preserved, while the right jaw has 12. The jaw bones themselves are “robust and massive,” the scientists wrote, while the teeth are “tall and cylindrical,” with some of them being as much as 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) long.
That tracks with previous Globidens finds, which lacked the serrated, razor-sharp teeth most people would associate with a carnivorous sea reptile. Past studies suggest that many mosasaurs likely relied less on powerful bites and more on their ability to swallow prey whole, though some members of the species may have been capable of tearing chunks out of their prey. Some experts have even proposed a theory that some of the species may have been venomous.
According to the paper, mosasaur fossils have been among the rarest Cretaceous-era finds in the Western Mississippi Embayment, a basin that stretches from southern Illinois to northern Louisiana. Now dry land, the area was covered by an ocean during the mosasaur’s time period. Almost all discovered remnants of the ancient animals have been isolated teeth or chunks of the jaw, making the complete jaw bones a precious find.
Because so many previous examples of mosasaur bones aren’t intact, figuring out exactly which subspecies of Globidens the jaws belonged to was a challenge for the scientists. Their shape is similar to other members of the Globidens family, but lacked some of the features common to those animals. Because of their shape, and the number of teeth embedded in the jawbone, they said they had to conclude it most likely belonged to a G. alabamensis.
Fiction has taken some liberties with mosasaurs. In Jurassic World, the creature was depicted in gargantuan proportions, snacking on a shark in a single bite. The real world thing was far smaller, as Globidens typically grew to around 20 feet (six meters) in length, about the size of the largest crocodile ever held in captivity. Pretty big, but far smaller than Shastasaurus, which, at 65 feet (20 meters), is the largest dinosaur-era aquatic animal.
That species of ichthyosaur has mostly been found in California and other parts of the west coast. Things might be bigger in Texas, but apparently, there are still limits.
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