User:Abyssal/Portal:Mosasaurs

The Mosasaurs Portal Introduction Selected article related to mosasaurs Radar topography of the Chicxulub Crater (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech). Chicxulub Crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula, with its center located near the town of Chicxulub, Yucatán, Mexico. The crater is over 180 kilometers (110 mi) in diameter, making the feature one of the largest confirmed impact structures in the world; the asteroid or comet whose impact formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter. The crater was named for the nearby town, as well as for the literal Maya translation of the name: "tail of the devil." The crater was discovered by Glen Penfield, a geophysicist who had been working in the Yucatán while looking for oil during the late 1970s. The presence of tektites, shocked quartz and gravity anomalies, as well as the age of the rocks and isotope analysis, show that this impact structure dates from the late Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 million years ago. The impact associated with the crater is implicated in causing the extinction of the dinosaurs as suggested by the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, although some critics disagree that the impact was the sole reason and also debate whether there was a single impact or whether the Chicxulub impactor was one of several that may have struck the Earth at around the same time. Recent evidence suggests that the impactor was a piece of a much larger asteroid which broke up in a collision more than 160 million years ago.(see more...) Selected image A mounted skeleton of a Late Cretaceous mosasaurid species belonging to the genus Plioplatecarpus, probably P. ictericus. In life the animal would have been about 5.5 m in length. The mounted skeleton is actually a composite of two individuals collected from the Niobrara Formation, of Kansas, USA and is exhibited in the Museum für Naturkunde in Karlsruhe, Germany. Photo credit: H. Zell Did you know? Artist's restoration of Kaganaias ...that the extinct marine reptile Kaganaias is the only ancient aquatic scaled reptile to be found in Asia? Need help? Do you have a question about Abyssal/Portal:Mosasaurs that you can't find the answer to? Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk. Subcategories Mosasaurs Mosasaurs by continent Mosasaurids Related content Paleontology Extinct and Endangered Species Mesozoic Ichthyosauromorphs Sauropterygians Dinosaurs Ammonoids Belemnoids Associated Wikimedia The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject: Commons Free media repository Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals Wikidata Free knowledge base Wikinews Free-content news Wikiquote Collection of quotations Wikisource Free-content library Wikiversity Free learning tools Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus Category:Mosasaurs portal