Mosasaur

Charlie Rinzler’s Paragraph:

The time period is the Mesozoic era (66-70 Million years ago). A fish is swimming across a passage of water to meet the rest of his school on the coral reef. He/She does not know it, but what lurks underneath its powerful fins is one of the most vicious carnivorous to ever roam the ocean. It is the feared Mosasaurus. With a length of almost 18 meters this carnivorous reptile can easily rip through any fish’s body like a knife through butter. This aquatic lizard known as the Mosasaurus is commonly found in Western Europe and North America. Its appetite called for Fish turtles and even smaller Mosasauruses. It ruled the seas in the maastrichtian age of the cretaceous period of the mesozoic era. For what, geologically speaking, is a very short time the Mosasaurus made a gigantic impact on the world. For a better image of what this monster with fins looked like imagine an 18 foot crocodile with the head of a T-rex and long scaley fins. Scientists first discovered the ancient river monster in 1764.

Max Young’s Paragraph:
This unique creature could be described as a cold blooded killer. It looked like a crocodile with flippers and an extremely long and wide tail, and the mosasaur could grow up to almost 18 metres in length. The carnivorous beast of an animal falls under the category of aquatic lizard because it breathed air, not water. Small mosasaurs most likely preyed on small fish while large mosasaurs hunted other “marine reptiles” and large fish and turtles. The mosasaur (also called mosasaurus) survived and thrived from 66 to 70 million years ago in the Cretaceous period that was part of the Mesozoic era. Mosasaurs would swim in the waters around what is now North America although fossils have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, Oceania, and even Antarctica.

References
Mosasaur. (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2014, from Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaur

Mosasaur. (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2014, from Facts on File website: http://www.fofweb.com/Science/default.asp?ItemID=WE40&ID=14260&SID=8&SearchStyle=KEYWORD&submitquery=1&InputText=mosasaur