Scientists concluded that at the end of the era of dinosaurs, Antarctica was inhabited by ten-meter sea monsters that hunted reptile cetaceans.
A huge sea lizard called Mosasaurus, with fearsome jaws and flipper-like limbs, lived in Antarctica 66 million years ago, when the area was much warmer than it is now. The skull of one of these creatures, 1.2 meters long, was discovered in 2010 on Seymour Island, north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Scientists have named their find Kaikaifilu hervei, in honor of the giant marine reptile from the native myth of the creation of the world. According to the legends of the Mapuche tribe, inhabiting southern Chile and Argentina, the world took its shape as a result of a battle between the deity Kaikayfilu and another huge reptile.
Kaikayfilu is currently the most impressive mosasaur found in the Southern Hemisphere. Previously considered the largest representative of this species, it was almost half the size, and the length of its skull was 70 cm.
Apparently, the main prey of the mosasaurs was the plesiosaurs-aristonectins, long-necked marine reptiles that fed on small animals filtered from the water, like modern baleen whales.
Kaikayfilu and other dinosaurs lived in the late Cretaceous and disappeared from the face of the planet during the mass extinction believed to follow the fall of an asteroid in the Yucatan Peninsula.
The author of the study, Rodrigo Otero of the University of Chile, describes his work: “Previously found remains of a mosasaur did not suggest the existence of such huge predators as Kaikayfilu, in an environment where plesiosaurs were especially numerous. The new find adds an important expected element to our understanding of the Late Cretaceous Antarctic ecosystem.
Evgeniya Yakovleva
Promotional video: