Tylosaurus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Tylosaurus's blunt snout was not just for show: scientists believe it rammed prey at high speed before biting, the same way a killer whale stuns fish today.
• ✓A specimen found in Kansas in 1911 had the remains of a large flightless seabird called Hesperornis, a smaller mosasaur, a bony fish, and a shark all preserved inside its stomach at once, proving it was an apex predator that ate almost anything.
• ✓Tylosaurus lived in the Western Interior Seaway, a warm shallow sea that split North America in two from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the Arctic Ocean, and Kansas was once underwater ocean floor.
• ✓Unlike fish, Tylosaurus breathed air and had to surface regularly, much like a modern sperm whale, meaning it hunted in the water column but was technically a giant air-breathing reptile.
• ✓The largest known Tylosaurus skull measures over 5 feet (1.5 meters) long on its own, and scientists estimate the full animal it belonged to stretched nearly 50 feet from snout to tail tip.