In Depth
Gavialimimus is a genus of mosasaur that lived in waters around North Africa during the latest Cretaceous. Gavialimimus is noted for its jaws which are substantially longer and more slender than those of most other mosasaurs. This would clearly be an adaptation for specialised feeding, possibly for either fish or squid. This may have also been a case of a mosasaur adapting to fill an ecological niche left behind by some of the specialised ichthyosaurs that had long been extinct for tens of millions of years before Gavialimimus existed.
Further reading
- A new species of longirostrine plioplatecarpine mosasaur (Squamata: Mosasauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco, with a re-evaluation of the problematic taxon ‘Platecarpus’ ptychodon. - Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 18 (21): 1769–1804. - Catherine R. C. Strong, Michael W. Caldwell, Takuya Konishi & Alessandro Palci - 2020.
