The Biggest Thing I Ever Found . . .

[indianasmith]

I was over at SMU's Paleontology Lab today, and I got to re-visit the largest fossil specimen I ever uncovered: the remains of a 50 foot Mosasaur called Tylosaurus Prorigor.  These guys were the apex predators of the late Cretaceous seas that once covered North Texas, and mine is one of the largest specimens on record.  The initial loose bones were found by a Dallas collector I knew; when his job hours changed and he could no longer check the creek regularly, he asked me to start checking it and see if I could find where the monster was eroding in.  The first day I found six vertebrae, two large jaw fragments, a paddle bone, and a bunch of smaller pieces of ribs, skull, and vertebral processes.  After a year of checking the creek every time it rained and finding dozens of large bones and hundreds of fragments, I finally found where the beast was washing in!  We excavated several ribs, part of a paddle, and about fifty vertebrae then!  This is the first time I have gotten to see all the recovered bones; they fill over a dozen drawers in SMU's fossil storage lab.  Here are a few pictures:


The quadrate bone connects the upper and lower jawbones.


These are some of the tail vertebrae.


One of the MASSIVE mid-back vertebrae!




One complete tooth, and then one broken off crown!

[indianasmith]

Here is the brain case.  This massive animal had a brain smaller than a baseball!


Here are some of the flipper bones.




Some of the jaw fragments found in the creek bed.  The complete skull was probably 6 feet long; we recovered about 60% of it.

[VenomX73]

Awesome - what a jackpot 

[Bushma]

That's amazing! Great finds Indy!

[Flangepart]

Hate to be chased by them bad boys!

[Umaril Has Returned]

Now that's really cool!  Wish I could have been there for that, but the pictures are good enough, thanks for sharing with us!