Paleontologists have identified a massive new species of mosasaur from Morocco’s Late Cretaceous phosphate deposits, shedding fresh light on the remarkable diversity of marine reptiles just before the dinosaurs went extinct.
The species, Pluridens imelaki, was described in a study published this week in the journal Diversity.
The newly named reptile belonged to Pluridens, a genus of relatively slender‑jawed mosasaurs, and is estimated to have exceeded 9 meters in length, placing it among the largest predatory mosasaurs known from the region.
According to researchers Dr. Nicholas Longrich of the University of Bath and Dr. Nour‑Eddine Jalil of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Marrakech, P. imelaki lived roughly 66–67 million years ago, during the latest Maastrichtian stage of the Cretaceous.
The species is assigned to the Halisaurinae, a mosasaur subfamily traditionally thought to include smaller, more lightly built species.
“The Late Cretaceous witnessed a major radiation of the Mosasauridae… the dominant marine predators during the final 25 million years of the period,” the researchers wrote. They note that Morocco’s Late Maastrichtian phosphatic beds host “the most diverse known mosasaurid assemblage, and possibly the most diverse marine reptile fauna in the world.”
The discovery underscores Morocco’s central role in revealing the final chapters of marine reptile evolution before the mass extinction event 66 million years ago.
