Question 1

How do you say Carinodens?

Accepted Answer

Carinodens is pronounced KAR-ih-no-denz. Break it into three parts: KAR like the start of 'car', then ih-NO, then denz. The stress lands on the NO in the middle. A good memory trick is to say 'car, I know dens' fast and you are almost exactly there.

Question 2

What does Carinodens mean?

Accepted Answer

Carinodens means keel teeth in Latin. The word carina refers to a keel, like the ridge on the bottom of a ship's hull, and dens means tooth. Scientists chose this name because the teeth of Carinodens have a distinctive keeled or ridged shape that sets them apart from other mosasaurs. It is one of those scientific names that is actually pretty descriptive and helpful.

Question 3

Was Carinodens a dinosaur?

Accepted Answer

No, Carinodens was not a dinosaur at all. It was a mosasaur, a type of large marine lizard that lived in the oceans during the Late Cretaceous period. Mosasaurs are actually more closely related to modern monitor lizards and snakes than they are to dinosaurs. They ruled the seas at the same time non-avian dinosaurs ruled the land.

Question 4

How big was Carinodens?

Accepted Answer

Carinodens was relatively small for a mosasaur, estimated at around 10 feet or about 3 meters long. That sounds impressive until you compare it to its cousin Mosasaurus, which could exceed 56 feet in length. In the world of mosasaurs, Carinodens was genuinely one of the runts of the family. It probably weighed somewhere around 330 pounds.

Question 5

What did Carinodens eat?

Accepted Answer

Carinodens was a specialized hunter of hard-shelled prey, including sea urchins, ammonites, and thick-shelled bivalves. Its teeth were small, rounded, and keeled, built for gripping and crushing shells rather than slicing through flesh like most mosasaurs. This makes it ecologically unusual in its family, kind of like the mosasaur version of a modern sea otter that cracks open shellfish for dinner.

Question 6

Why did Carinodens have to get its name changed?

Accepted Answer

The original name for Carinodens was Compressidens, which means compressed teeth, and it was given that name in 1964. The problem was that scientists discovered Compressidens was already being used for a tiny sea snail called a scaphopod mollusk. Under the official rules of biological naming, two different animals cannot share the same genus name, so in 1969 the mosasaur was renamed Carinodens. It is a surprisingly common situation in paleontology when so many creatures need unique names.

Question 7

Where was Carinodens found?

Accepted Answer

Fossils of Carinodens have been found across three different continents, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Morocco, and Pakistan. These locations were all once covered by warm, shallow seas connected to the ancient Tethys Ocean during the Late Cretaceous period. The phosphate deposits of Morocco have been especially productive for mosasaur fossils including Carinodens material.

Question 8

When did Carinodens go extinct?

Accepted Answer

Carinodens lived right up until the very end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 66 million years ago. It was wiped out in the same catastrophic mass extinction event, most likely triggered by the Chicxulub asteroid impact, that killed all non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. Carinodens was one of the last mosasaurs to ever exist, making it a creature of the final chapter of the Age of Reptiles.

Carinodens Pronunciation

Carinodens Picture

What does Carinodens mean?

Name Roots

Fun Facts

Learn More About Carinodens

Related Prehistoric Creatures