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Mosasaur

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135-583: Mosasaurs (from Latin Mosa meaning the ' Meuse ', and Greek σαύρος sauros meaning 'lizard') are an extinct group of large aquatic reptiles within the family Mosasauridae that lived during the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. They belong to the order Squamata , which includes lizards and snakes . During

270-420: A 2009 analysis by Dutchak and Caldwell instead found that Dallasaurus was ancestral to both russellosaurines and mosasaurines, although results were inconsistent in later studies. A 2017 study by Simoes et al. noted that utilization of different methods of phylogenetic analyses can yield different findings and ultimately found an indication that tethysaurines were a case of hydropedal mosasaurs reversing back to

405-404: A breaststroke motion to gain added bursts of speed during an attack on prey. More recently, a fossil of Platecarpus tympaniticus has been found that preserved not only skin impressions, but also internal organs. Several reddish areas in the fossil may represent the heart, lungs, and kidneys. The trachea is also preserved, along with part of what may be the retina in the eye. The placement of

540-411: A bright blue light flashed until they began to associate the light with food, extending their tentacles every time the blue light was flashed. The blue light was again flashed without the food 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours later. The nautiluses continued to respond excitedly to the blue light for up to 30 minutes after the experiment. An hour later they showed no reaction to

675-474: A call for increased protection and in 2016 all species in Family Nautilidae were added to CITES Appendix II , regulating international trade. Palauans see nautili ( Palauan : kedarm ) as a symbol of vulnerable or fragile character from a belief that they easily die even from slight bumps on ocean rocks; hence someone who gets quickly angry after being pranked is compared to one ( ng ko er

810-505: A century ago indicate that mosasaurs gave birth to live young, and that they spent their early years of life out in the open ocean, not in sheltered nurseries or areas such as shallow water as previously believed. Whether mosasaurs provided parental care, like other marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs, is currently unknown. The discovery of young mosasaurs was published in the journal Palaeontology . A 2020 study published in Nature described

945-414: A cephalopod, many of whom live less than three even in captivity and under ideal living conditions. However, nautiluses typically do not reach sexual maturity until they are about 15 years old, limiting their reproductive lifespan to often less than five years. Nautilus male has a reproductive organ named Van der Hoeven's organ . Nautilus female has two reproductive organs whose functions are unknown,

1080-542: A digestive caecum before entering the relatively brief intestine. Like all cephalopods, the blood of the nautilus contains hemocyanin , which is blue in its oxygenated state. There are two pairs of gills which are the only remnants of the ancestral metamerism to be visible in extant cephalopods. Oxygenated blood arrives at the heart through four ventricles and flows out to the animal's organs through distinct aortas but returns through veins which are too small and varied to be specifically described. The one exception to this

1215-526: A faster pace. It is characterised by greater use of prepositions, and word order that is closer to modern Romance languages, for example, while grammatically retaining more or less the same formal rules as Classical Latin. Ultimately, Latin diverged into a distinct written form, where the commonly spoken form was perceived as a separate language, for instance early French or Italian dialects, that could be transcribed differently. It took some time for these to be viewed as wholly different from Latin however. After

1350-743: A few in German , Dutch , Norwegian , Danish and Swedish . Latin is still spoken in Vatican City, a city-state situated in Rome that is the seat of the Catholic Church . The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part, in substantial works or in fragments to be analyzed in philology . They are in part the subject matter of the field of classics . Their works were published in manuscript form before

1485-404: A few. Famous and well regarded writers included Petrarch, Erasmus, Salutati , Celtis , George Buchanan and Thomas More . Non fiction works were long produced in many subjects, including the sciences, law, philosophy, historiography and theology. Famous examples include Isaac Newton 's Principia . Latin was also used as a convenient medium for translations of important works first written in

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1620-448: A fleshy sheath that contains the second structure: an extendable cirrus (plural: cirri). The sheaths of the digital tentacles are fused at their base into a single mass referred to as the cephalic sheath. The digital cirri can be fully withdrawn into the sheath and are highly flexible, capable of extending just over double their fully retracted length and show a high degree of allowable bendability and torsion. Despite not having suckers,

1755-660: A hydropedal form independently, the former through the tethysaurines, meaning that their placement within the Mosasauridae creates an unnatural polyphyly and thus potentially invalid. Caldwell informally proposed in a 2012 publication that the definition of a mosasaur must thus be redefined into one that does not consider russellosaurines and halisauromorphs as true mosasaurs, but as an independent group of marine lizards. However, phylogenetic studies of mosasaurs can be fickle, especially when wild card taxa like Dallasaurus remain poorly understood. For example, some studies such as

1890-588: A large fossilized hatched egg from Antarctica from the very end of the Cretaceous , about 68 million years ago. The egg is considered one of the largest amniote eggs ever known, rivalling that of the elephant bird , and due to its soft, thin, folded texture, it likely belonged to a marine animal. While the organism that produced it remains unknown, the egg's pore structure is very similar to that of extant lepidosaurs such as lizards and snakes, and presence of mosasaur fossils nearby indicates that it may have been

2025-399: A method similar to the one used today by conger eels and sea snakes , undulating their entire bodies from side to side. However, new evidence suggests that many advanced mosasaurs had large, crescent-shaped flukes on the ends of their tails, similar to those of sharks and some ichthyosaurs . Rather than use snake-like undulations, their bodies probably remained stiff to reduce drag through

2160-417: A mosasaur egg. It is unknown whether the egg was laid on land or in the water. The egg was assigned to the newly described oospecies Antarcticoolithus bradyi . However, it has been proposed that this egg belonged to a dinosaur. Paleontologists compared the taxonomic diversity and patterns of morphological disparity in mosasaurs with sea level, sea surface temperature , and stable carbon isotope curves for

2295-492: A mosasaur. Mosasaurs were likely countershaded , with dark backs and light underbellies, much like a great white shark or leatherback sea turtle , the latter of which had fossilized ancestors for which color was also determined. The findings were described in Nature . Mosasaurs possessed a thecodont dentiton , meaning that the roots were cemented deeply into the jaw bone. Mosasaurs did not use permanent teeth but instead constantly shed them. Replacement teeth developed within

2430-560: A native language, Medieval Latin was used across Western and Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages as a working and literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance , which then developed a classicizing form, called Renaissance Latin . This was the basis for Neo-Latin which evolved during the early modern period . In these periods Latin was used productively and generally taught to be written and spoken, at least until

2565-452: A nautilus will be unfazed despite the pressure change of as much as 80 standard atmospheres (1,200 psi). The exact reasons for this ability, which is thought to be coincidental rather than specifically functional, are not known, though the perforated structure of the animal's vena cava is thought to play an important role. Unlike many other cephalopods, nautiluses do not have what many consider to be good vision; their eye structure

2700-406: A pit inside the roots of the original tooth called the resorption pit. This is done through a distinctively unique eight-stage process. The first stage was characterized by the mineralization of a small tooth crown developed elsewhere that descended into the resorption pit by the second stage. In the third stage, the developing crown firmly cemented itself within the resorption pit and grew in size; by

2835-422: A plesiopedal condition rather than an independent ancestral feature. The following cladograms illustrate the two views of mosasaur evolution. Topology A follows an ancestral state reconstruction from an implied weighted maximum parsimony tree by Simoes et al. (2017), which contextualizes a single marine origin with tethysaurine reversal. Topologies B and C illustrate the multiple-origins hypothesis of hydropedality;

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2970-567: A result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from late antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars. The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, also called Archaic or Early Latin, which was spoken from the Roman Kingdom , traditionally founded in 753 BC, through

3105-412: A seemingly simple brain , not the large complex brains of octopus , cuttlefish and squid , and had long been assumed to lack intelligence. But the cephalopod nervous system is quite different from that of other animals, and recent experiments have shown not only memory, but a changing response to the same event over time. In a study in 2008, a group of nautiluses ( N. pompilius ) were given food as

3240-458: A sensitive forked tongue. A study published in 2016 by T. Lyn Harrell, Alberto Pérez-Huerta and Celina Suarez showed that mosasaurs were endothermic . The study contradicted findings published in 2010 indicating mosasaurs were ectothermic . The 2010 study did not use warm-blooded animals for comparison but analogous groups of common marine animals. Based on comparisons with modern warm-blooded animals and fossils of known cold-blooded animals from

3375-407: A separate language, existing more or less in parallel with the literary or educated Latin, but this is now widely dismissed. The term 'Vulgar Latin' remains difficult to define, referring both to informal speech at any time within the history of Latin, and the kind of informal Latin that had begun to move away from the written language significantly in the post-Imperial period, that led ultimately to

3510-709: A small number of Latin services held in the Anglican church. These include an annual service in Oxford, delivered with a Latin sermon; a relic from the period when Latin was the normal spoken language of the university. In the Western world, many organizations, governments and schools use Latin for their mottos due to its association with formality, tradition, and the roots of Western culture . Canada's motto A mari usque ad mare ("from sea to sea") and most provincial mottos are also in Latin. The Canadian Victoria Cross

3645-429: A sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech. Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus , which contain fragments of everyday speech, gives evidence of an informal register of the language, Vulgar Latin (termed sermo vulgi , "the speech of the masses", by Cicero ). Some linguists, particularly in the nineteenth century, believed this to be

3780-572: A spoken and written language by the scholarship by the Renaissance humanists . Petrarch and others began to change their usage of Latin as they explored the texts of the Classical Latin world. Skills of textual criticism evolved to create much more accurate versions of extant texts through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and some important texts were rediscovered. Comprehensive versions of authors' works were published by Isaac Casaubon , Joseph Scaliger and others. Nevertheless, despite

3915-432: A strictly left-to-right script. During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, from about 75 BC to AD 200, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other literate men, who wrote the great works of classical literature , which were taught in grammar and rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such schools , which served as

4050-410: A striking white iridescent inner layer. The innermost portion of the shell is a pearlescent blue-gray. The osmeña pearl , contrarily to its name, is not a pearl , but a jewellery product derived from this part of the shell. Internally, the shell divides into camerae (chambers), the chambered section being called the phragmocone . The divisions are defined by septa , each of which is pierced in

4185-693: A vernacular, such as those of Descartes . Latin education underwent a process of reform to classicise written and spoken Latin. Schooling remained largely Latin medium until approximately 1700. Until the end of the 17th century, the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin. Afterwards, most diplomatic documents were written in French (a Romance language ) and later native or other languages. Education methods gradually shifted towards written Latin, and eventually concentrating solely on reading skills. The decline of Latin education took several centuries and proceeded much more slowly than

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4320-411: Is Veritas ("truth"). Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn, and the mother of Virtue. Switzerland has adopted the country's Latin short name Helvetia on coins and stamps, since there is no room to use all of the nation's four official languages . For a similar reason, it adopted the international vehicle and internet code CH , which stands for Confoederatio Helvetica ,

4455-523: Is Bruce, a 65-70%-complete specimen of Tylosaurus pembinensis dating from the late Cretaceous Period, approximately 80 million years ago, and measuring 13.05 m (42.815 ft) from nose tip to tail tip. Bruce was discovered in 1974 north of Thornhill, Manitoba, Canada, and resides at the nearby Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba . Bruce was awarded the Guinness Record for

4590-897: Is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages . Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio ), the lower Tiber area around Rome , Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire . By the late Roman Republic , Old Latin had evolved into standardized Classical Latin . Vulgar Latin refers to

4725-640: Is a reversal of the original phrase Non terrae plus ultra ("No land further beyond", "No further!"). According to legend , this phrase was inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules , the rocks on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and the western end of the known, Mediterranean world. Charles adopted the motto following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and it also has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence. In

4860-542: Is due to the cooler surface waters found in these southern hemisphere habitats as compared to the many equatorial habitats of other nautilus populations – these usually being restricted to depths greater than 100 m (300 ft). Nautiluses generally avoid water temperatures above 25 °C (75 °F). Nautiluses are scavengers and opportunistic predators. They eat lobster molts , hermit crabs , and carrion of any kind. Fossil records indicate that nautiloids have experienced minimal morphological changes over

4995-498: Is even smaller, with a mean shell diameter of 11.56 cm (4.55 in). To swim, the nautilus draws water into and out of the living chamber with its hyponome , which uses jet propulsion . This mode of propulsion is generally considered inefficient compared to propulsion with fins or undulatory locomotion , however, the nautilus has been found to be particularly efficient compared to other jet-propelled marine animals like squid and jellyfish , or even salmon at low speeds. It

5130-414: Is externalized as a planispiral shell . The animal can withdraw completely into its shell and close the opening with a leathery hood formed from two specially folded tentacles . The shell is coiled, aragonitic , nacreous and pressure-resistant, imploding at a depth of about 800 m (2,600 ft). The nautilus shell is composed of two layers: a matte white outer layer with dark orange stripes, and

5265-552: Is found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy have retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christian (Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711, cutting off communications between the major Romance regions, that the languages began to diverge seriously. The spoken Latin that would later become Romanian diverged somewhat more from

5400-456: Is highly developed but lacks a solid lens . Whereas a sealed lens allows for the formation of highly focused and clear, detailed surrounding imagery, nautiluses have a simple pinhole eye open to the environment which only allows for the creation of correspondingly simple imagery. Instead of vision, the animal is thought to use olfaction (smell) as the primary sense for foraging and for locating and identifying potential mates. The "ear" of

5535-689: Is modelled after the British Victoria Cross which has the inscription "For Valour". Because Canada is officially bilingual, the Canadian medal has replaced the English inscription with the Latin Pro Valore . Spain's motto Plus ultra , meaning "even further", or figuratively "Further!", is also Latin in origin. It is taken from the personal motto of Charles V , Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain (as Charles I), and

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5670-637: Is not found above the Middle Jurassic and is followed by the Upper Jurassic - Miocene Eutrephoceras . Eutrephoceras is generally subglobular, broadly rounded laterally and ventrally, with a small to occluded umbilicus, broadly rounded hyponomic sinus, only slightly sinuous sutures, and a small siphuncle that is variable in position. Next to appear is the Lower Cretaceous Strionautilus from India and

5805-616: Is now North America. Mosasaur fossils have been found in the Netherlands , Belgium , Denmark , Portugal , Sweden , South Africa , Spain , France , Germany , Poland , the Czech Republic , Italy Bulgaria , the United Kingdom , Russia , Ukraine , Kazakhstan , Azerbaijan , Japan , Egypt , Israel , Jordan , Syria , Turkey , Niger , Angola , Morocco , Australia , New Zealand , and on Vega Island off

5940-621: Is small and shallow, the suture only slightly sinuous. The siphuncle is unknown. Obinautilus has also been placed in Nautilidae by some authorities, though it may instead be an argonautid octopus . The family Nautilidae contains up to nine extant species and several extinct species : Genetic data collected in 2011 pointed to there being only three extant species: A. scrobiculatus , N. macromphalus , and N. pompilius , with N. belauensis and N. stenomphalus both subsumed under N. pompilius , possibly as subspecies , though this

6075-1011: Is taught at many high schools, especially in Europe and the Americas. It is most common in British public schools and grammar schools, the Italian liceo classico and liceo scientifico , the German Humanistisches Gymnasium and the Dutch gymnasium . Occasionally, some media outlets, targeting enthusiasts, broadcast in Latin. Notable examples include Radio Bremen in Germany, YLE radio in Finland (the Nuntii Latini broadcast from 1989 until it

6210-481: Is the largest species in the genus. One form from Indonesia and northern Australia , once called N. repertus , may reach 25.4 cm (10.0 in) in diameter. However, most nautilus species never exceed 20 cm (8 in). Nautilus macromphalus is the smallest species, usually measuring only 16 cm ( 6 + 1 ⁄ 2  in). A dwarf population from the Sulu Sea ( Nautilus pompilius suluensis )

6345-429: Is the vena cava, a single large vein running along the underside of the crop into which nearly all other vessels containing deoxygenated blood empty. All blood passes through one of the four sets of filtering organs (composed of one pericardial appendage and two renal appendages) upon leaving the vena cava and before arriving at the gills for re-oxygenation. Blood waste is emptied through a series of corresponding pores into

6480-442: Is thought that this is related to the use of asymmetrical contractile cycles and may be an adaptation to mitigate metabolic demands and protect against hypoxia when foraging at depth. While water is inside the chamber, the siphuncle extracts salt from it and diffuses it into the blood. The animal adjusts its buoyancy only in long term density changes by osmosis , either removing liquid from its chambers or allowing water from

6615-417: Is typically considered a cephalopod "brain": the upper portion of the nerve ring lacks differentiated lobes, and most of the nervous tissue appears to focus on finding and consuming food (i.e., it lacks a "higher learning" center). Nautili also tend to have rather short memory spans, and the nerve ring is not protected by any form of brain case. Nautili are the sole living cephalopods whose bony body structure

6750-496: Is used as a pearl substitute. In Samoa , nautilus shells decorate the forehead band of a traditional headdress called tuiga . Nautilus shells were popular items in the Renaissance and Baroque cabinet of curiosities and were often mounted by goldsmiths on a thin stem to make extravagant nautilus shell cups. The low fecundity , late maturity, long gestation period and long life-span of nautiluses suggest that these species are vulnerable to overexploitation and demand for

6885-399: Is very distinct in comparison to coleoids. Unlike the ten-armed Decabrachia or the eight-armed Octopodiformes , nautilus may possess any number of tentacles (cirri) from 50 to over 90 tentacles depending on the sex and individual. These tentacles are classified into three distinct categories: ocular, digital, and labial (buccal). There are two sets of ocular tentacles: one set in front of

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7020-543: The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy . About 270,000 inscriptions are known. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. In

7155-583: The Holy See , the primary language of its public journal , the Acta Apostolicae Sedis , and the working language of the Roman Rota . Vatican City is also home to the world's only automatic teller machine that gives instructions in Latin. In the pontifical universities postgraduate courses of Canon law are taught in Latin, and papers are written in the same language. There are

7290-648: The K-Pg extinction event most nautiloid species went extinct , while members of Coleoidea managed to survive. Following the mass extinction, the nautilus became the only extant species of nautiloids. The family Nautilidae has its origin in the Trigonocerataceae ( Centroceratina ), specifically in the Syringonautilidae of the Late Triassic and continues to this day with Nautilus ,

7425-574: The Middle Ages , borrowing from Latin occurred from ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century or indirectly after the Norman Conquest , through the Anglo-Norman language . From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed " inkhorn terms ", as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by

7560-528: The Organ of Valenciennes and Owen's laminated organ . Nautiluses are only found in the Indo-Pacific , from 30° N to 30° S latitude and 90° E to 175° E longitude. They inhabit the deep slopes of coral reefs . Nautiluses usually inhabit depths of several hundred metres. It has long been believed that nautiluses rise at night to feed, mate, and lay eggs , but it appears that, in at least some populations,

7695-576: The Roman Rite of the Catholic Church at the Vatican City . The church continues to adapt concepts from modern languages to Ecclesiastical Latin of the Latin language. Contemporary Latin is more often studied to be read rather than spoken or actively used. Latin has greatly influenced the English language , along with a large number of others, and historically contributed many words to

7830-569: The Romance languages . During the Classical period, informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors, inscriptions such as Curse tablets and those found as graffiti . In the Late Latin period, language changes reflecting spoken (non-classical) norms tend to be found in greater quantities in texts. As it

7965-636: The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses. While the written form of Latin was increasingly standardized into a fixed form, the spoken forms began to diverge more greatly. Currently, the five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish , Portuguese , French , Italian , and Romanian . Despite dialectal variation, which

8100-442: The pallial cavity . The central component of the nautilus nervous system is the oesophageal nerve ring which is a collection of ganglia , commissures , and connectives that together form a ring around the animal's oesophagus. From this ring extend all of the nerves forward to the mouth, tentacles, and funnel; laterally to the eyes and rhinophores ; and posteriorly to the remaining organs. The nerve ring does not constitute what

8235-404: The " spadix ", which transfers sperm into the female's mantle during mating. At sexual maturity, the male shell becomes slightly larger than the female's. Males have been found to greatly outnumber females in practically all published studies, accounting for 60 to 94% of all recorded individuals at different sites. The lifespan of nautiluses may exceed 20 years, which is exceptionally lengthy for

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8370-637: The British Crown. The motto is featured on all presently minted coinage and has been featured in most coinage throughout the nation's history. Several states of the United States have Latin mottos , such as: Many military organizations today have Latin mottos, such as: Some law governing bodies in the Philippines have Latin mottos, such as: Some colleges and universities have adopted Latin mottos, for example Harvard University 's motto

8505-649: The Cretaceous seaway: Texas , southwest Arkansas , New Mexico , Kansas , Colorado , Nebraska , South Dakota , Montana , Wyoming , and the Pierre Shale / Fox Hills formations of North Dakota . Lastly, mosasaur bones and teeth are also known from California , Mexico , Colombia , Brazil , Peru , and Chile . Many of the so-called 'dinosaur' remains found on New Zealand are actually mosasaurs and plesiosaurs , both being Mesozoic predatory marine reptiles. The largest mosasaur currently on public display

8640-613: The English lexicon , particularly after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest . Latin and Ancient Greek roots are heavily used in English vocabulary in theology , the sciences , medicine , and law . A number of phases of the language have been recognized, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, and syntax. There are no hard and fast rules of classification; different scholars emphasize different features. As

8775-472: The European ex- USSR , named by Shimankiy in 1951. Strionautilus is compressed, involute, with fine longitudinal striations. Whorl sections are subrectangular, sutures sinuous, the siphuncle subcentral. Also from the Cretaceous is Pseudocenoceras , named by Spath in 1927. Pseudocenoceras is compressed, smooth, with subrectangular whorl sections, flattened venter, and a deep umbilicus. The suture crosses

8910-599: The Grinch Stole Christmas! , The Cat in the Hat , and a book of fairy tales, " fabulae mirabiles ", are intended to garner popular interest in the language. Additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissner's Latin Phrasebook . Some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series,

9045-758: The Mosasaurinae than other mosasaurs. Bell and Polycn (2005) grouped these outside mosasaurs into two clades: the Russellosaurina, whose basal members include plesiopedal genera (Tethysaurinae) of their own and derived members consisting of the Plioplatecarpinae and Tylosaurinae; and the Halisauromorpha, containing the Halisaurinae. The placement of Dallasaurus suggested that the Russellosaurina and Halisauromorpha may have evolved

9180-499: The Nautilidae. All are protected under CITES Appendix II . Depending on species, adult shell diameter is between 10 and 25 cm (4 and 10 inches). Nautilidae, both extant and extinct, are characterized by involute or more or less convolute shells that are generally smooth, with compressed or depressed whorl sections, straight to sinuous sutures, and a tubular, generally central siphuncle . Having survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, nautiluses represent

9315-467: The United States the unofficial national motto until 1956 was E pluribus unum meaning "Out of many, one". The motto continues to be featured on the Great Seal . It also appears on the flags and seals of both houses of congress and the flags of the states of Michigan, North Dakota, New York, and Wisconsin. The motto's 13 letters symbolically represent the original Thirteen Colonies which revolted from

9450-563: The University of Kentucky, the University of Oxford and also Princeton University. There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The Latin Misplaced Pages has more than 130,000 articles. Italian , French , Portuguese , Spanish , Romanian , Catalan , Romansh , Sardinian and other Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin. There are also many Latin borrowings in English and Albanian , as well as

9585-495: The Upper Cretaceous to explore factors that may have influenced their evolution. No single factor unambiguously accounts for all radiations, diversification, and extinctions; however, the broader patterns of taxonomic diversification and morphological disparity point to niche differentiation in a "fishing up" scenario under the influence of "bottom-up" selective pressures. The most likely driving force in mosasaur evolution

9720-406: The ancient pelagic marine mollusc species of the cephalopod family Nautilidae . This is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and the suborder Nautilina . It comprises nine living species in two genera, the type of which is the genus Nautilus . Though it more specifically refers to the species Nautilus pompilius , the name chambered nautilus is also used for any of

9855-416: The animal (not counting the modified tentacles that form the hood). The labial tentacles are generally not visible, being smaller than the digital tentacles, and more variable both in number and in shape. Males modify three of their labial tentacles into the spadix , which delivers spermatophores into the female during copulation. The tentacle is composed of two distinct structures: the first structure,

9990-425: The arrangement of tentacles around the buccal cone: males have a spadix organ (shaped like a spike or shovel) located on the left side of the cone making the cone look irregular, whereas the buccal cone of the female is bilaterally symmetrical . The crop is the largest portion of the digestive tract, and is highly extensible. From the crop, food passes to the small muscular stomach for crushing, and then goes past

10125-731: The author and then forgotten, but some useful ones survived, such as 'imbibe' and 'extrapolate'. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French . Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Nautilus † Carinonautilus † Cenoceras † Eutrephoceras † Pseudocenoceras † Strionautilus Allonautilus Nautilus † = Extinct Nautilus (from Latin nautilus  ' paper nautilus ', from Ancient Greek ναυτίλος nautílos  'little sailor') are

10260-425: The benefit of those who do not understand Latin. There are also songs written with Latin lyrics . The libretto for the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex by Igor Stravinsky is in Latin. Parts of Carl Orff 's Carmina Burana are written in Latin. Enya has recorded several tracks with Latin lyrics. The continued instruction of Latin is seen by some as a highly valuable component of a liberal arts education. Latin

10395-454: The blood in the siphuncle to slowly refill the chambers. This is done in response to sudden changes in buoyancy that can occur with predatory attacks of fish, which can break off parts of the shell. This limits nautiluses in that they cannot operate under the extreme hydrostatic pressures found at depths greater than approximately 800 metres (2,600 ft), and in fact implode at about that depth, causing instant death. The gas also contained in

10530-469: The blue light. However, between 6 and 12 hours after the training, they again responded to the blue light, but more tentatively. The researchers concluded that nautiluses had memory capabilities similar to the " short-term " and " long-term memories " of the more advanced cephalopods, despite having different brain structures. However, the long-term memory capability of nautiluses was much shorter than that of other cephalopods. The nautiluses completely forgot

10665-460: The body in type and size. In Harrana specimens, two types of scales were observed on a single specimen: keeled scales covering the upper regions of the body and smooth scales covering the lower. As ambush predators, lurking and quickly capturing prey using stealth tactics, they may have benefited from the nonreflective, keeled scales. Additionally, mosasaurs had large pectoral girdles, and such genera as Plotosaurus may have used their front flippers in

10800-409: The careful work of Petrarch, Politian and others, first the demand for manuscripts, and then the rush to bring works into print, led to the circulation of inaccurate copies for several centuries following. Neo-Latin literature was extensive and prolific, but less well known or understood today. Works covered poetry, prose stories and early novels, occasional pieces and collections of letters, to name

10935-405: The carefully hidden fossil was uncovered, after a reward, it is said, of 600 bottles of wine, and transported to Paris. After it had been earlier interpreted as a fish, a crocodile, and a sperm whale, the first to understand its lizard affinities was the Dutch scientist Adriaan Gilles Camper in 1799. In 1808, Georges Cuvier confirmed this conclusion, although le Grand Animal fossile de Maëstricht

11070-429: The chambers is slightly below atmospheric pressure at sea level. The maximum depth at which they can regulate buoyancy by osmotic removal of chamber liquid is not known. The nautilus has the extremely rare ability to withstand being brought to the surface from its deep natural habitat without suffering any apparent damage from the experience. Whereas fish or crustaceans brought up from such depths inevitably arrive dead,

11205-415: The classicised Latin that followed through to the present are often grouped together as Neo-Latin , or New Latin, which have in recent decades become a focus of renewed study , given their importance for the development of European culture, religion and science. The vast majority of written Latin belongs to this period, but its full extent is unknown. The Renaissance reinforced the position of Latin as

11340-628: The coast of Antarctica . Tooth taxon Globidens timorensis is known from the island of Timor ; however, the phylogenetic placement of this species is uncertain and it might not even be a mosasaur. Mosasaurs have been found in Canada in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and in much of the contiguous United States. Complete or partial specimens have been found in Alabama , Mississippi , New Jersey , Tennessee , and Georgia , as well as in states covered by

11475-465: The country's full Latin name. Some film and television in ancient settings, such as Sebastiane , The Passion of the Christ and Barbarians (2020 TV series) , have been made with dialogue in Latin. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/television series as The Exorcist and Lost (" Jughead "). Subtitles are usually shown for

11610-419: The dark water below. The underside is almost completely white, making the animal indistinguishable from brighter waters near the surface. This mode of camouflage is called countershading . The nautilus shell presents one of the finest natural examples of a logarithmic spiral , although it is not a golden spiral . The use of nautilus shells in art and literature is covered at nautilus shell . N. pompilius

11745-503: The decline in written Latin output. Despite having no native speakers, Latin is still used for a variety of purposes in the contemporary world. The largest organisation that retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts is the Catholic Church . The Catholic Church required that Mass be carried out in Latin until the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965 , which permitted the use of the vernacular . Latin remains

11880-546: The delicate nature of the scales, which nearly eliminates the possibility of preservation, in addition to the preservation sediment types and the marine conditions under which the preservation occurred. Until the discovery of several mosasaur specimens with remarkably well-preserved scale imprints from late Maastrichtian deposits of the Muwaqqar Chalk Marl Formation of Harrana in Jordan , knowledge of

12015-592: The digital tentacles show strong adhesive capabilities. Adhesion is achieved through the secretion of a neutral (rather than acidic) mucopolysaccharide from secretory cells in the ridges of the digital cirri. Release is triggered through contraction of the tentacle musculature rather than the secretion of a chemical solvent, similar to the adhesion/release system in Euprymna , though it is unclear whether these adhesives are homologous . The ocular tentacles show no adhesive capability but operate as sensory organs. Both

12150-446: The earlier training 24 hours later, in contrast to octopuses, for example, which can remember conditioning for weeks afterwards. However, this may be simply the result of the conditioning procedure being suboptimal for sustaining long-term memories in nautiluses. Nevertheless, the study showed that scientists had previously underestimated the memory capabilities of nautiluses. Nautiluses reproduce by laying eggs . Gravid females attach

12285-589: The educated and official world, Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies. Without the institutions of the Roman Empire that had supported its uniformity, Medieval Latin

12420-444: The existence of fossilized animals that were different from any known living creatures. When the specimen was discovered between 1770 and 1774, Johann Leonard Hoffmann , a surgeon and fossil collector, corresponded about it with the most influential scientists of his day, making the fossil famous. The original owner, though, was Godding, a canon of Maastricht cathedral. When the French revolutionary forces occupied Maastricht in 1794,

12555-403: The eye (pre-ocular) and one set behind the eye (post-ocular). The digital and labial tentacles are arrayed circularly around the mouth, with the digital tentacles forming the outermost ring and the labial tentacles in between the digital tentacles and the mouth. There are 19 pairs of digital tentacles that, together with the ocular tentacles, make up the 42 appendages that are visible when observing

12690-466: The fertilized eggs, either singly or in small batches, to rocks in warmer waters (21–25 Celsius), whereupon the eggs take eight to twelve months to develop until the 30-millimetre (1.2 in) juveniles hatch. Females spawn once per year and regenerate their gonads , making nautiluses the only cephalopods to present iteroparity or polycyclic spawning . Nautiluses are sexually dimorphic , in that males have four tentacles modified into an organ, called

12825-425: The food items of mosasaurs were ammonites , molluscs with shells similar to those of Nautilus , which were abundant in the Cretaceous seas. Holes have been found in fossil shells of some ammonites, mainly Pachydiscus and Placenticeras . These were once interpreted as a result of limpets attaching themselves to the ammonites, but the triangular shape of the holes, their size, and their presence on both sides of

12960-894: The former follows Makádi et al. (2012), while the latter follows a PhD dissertation by Mekarski (2017) that experimentally includes dolichosaur and poorly-represented aigialosaur taxa. Placement of major group names follow definitions by Madzia and Cau (2017). Adriosaurus suessi Dolichosaurus longicollis Komensaurus carrolli Pontosaurus kornhuberi Aigialosaurus dalmaticus Opetiosaurus bucchichi Halisaurinae Yaguarasaurus columbianus Russellosaurus coheni Romeosaurus fumanensis Tethysaurus nopcsai Pannoniasaurus inexpectatus Tylosaurinae Plioplatecarpinae Dallasaurus turneri Clidastes Derived mosasaurines Latin Latin ( lingua Latina , pronounced [ˈlɪŋɡʷa ɫaˈtiːna] , or Latinum [ɫaˈtiːnʊ̃] )

13095-410: The fourth stage, it would be of the same size as the crown in the original tooth. Stages five and six were characterized by the development of the replacement tooth's root: in stage five the root developed vertically, and in stage six the root expanded in all directions to the point that the replacement tooth became exposed and actively pushed on the original tooth. In the seventh stage, the original tooth

13230-703: The invention of printing and are now published in carefully annotated printed editions, such as the Loeb Classical Library , published by Harvard University Press , or the Oxford Classical Texts , published by Oxford University Press . Latin translations of modern literature such as: The Hobbit , Treasure Island , Robinson Crusoe , Paddington Bear , Winnie the Pooh , The Adventures of Tintin , Asterix , Harry Potter , Le Petit Prince , Max and Moritz , How

13365-406: The kidneys is farther forward in the abdomen than it is in monitor lizards, and is more similar to those of cetaceans . As in cetaceans, the bronchi leading to the lungs run parallel to each other instead of splitting apart from one another as in monitors and other terrestrial reptiles. In mosasaurs, these features may be internal adaptations to fully marine lifestyles. In 2011, collagen protein

13500-704: The language of the Roman Rite . The Tridentine Mass (also known as the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass) is celebrated in Latin. Although the Mass of Paul VI (also known as the Ordinary Form or the Novus Ordo) is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or in whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of

13635-440: The large areas where it had come to be natively spoken. However, even after the fall of Western Rome , Latin remained the common language of international communication , science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the early 19th century, by which time modern languages had supplanted it in common academic and political usage. Late Latin is the literary language from the 3rd century AD onward. No longer spoken as

13770-499: The largest known species reached up to 17 m (56 ft), but it has been considered to be probably overestimated by Cleary et al. (2018). Currently, the largest publicly exhibited mosasaur skeleton in the world is on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden , Manitoba . The specimen, nicknamed "Bruce", is just over 15 m (49 ft) long, but this might be an overestimate as

13905-529: The largest mosasaur on public display in 2014. The first publicized discovery of a partial fossil mosasaur skull in 1764 by quarry workers in a subterranean gallery of a limestone quarry in Mount Saint Peter , near the Dutch city of Maastricht , preceded any major dinosaur fossil discoveries, but remained little known. However, a second find of a partial skull drew the Age of Enlightenment 's attention to

14040-407: The last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period ( Turonian – Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs , mosasaurids became the dominant marine predators. They themselves became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago. Mosasaurs breathed air, were powerful swimmers, and were well-adapted to living in

14175-467: The late seventeenth century, when spoken skills began to erode. It then became increasingly taught only to be read. Latin grammar is highly fusional , with classes of inflections for case , number , person , gender , tense , mood , voice , and aspect . The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets . Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and

14310-431: The later part of the Roman Republic , up to 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin . It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of Plautus and Terence . The Latin alphabet was devised from the Etruscan alphabet . The writing later changed from what was initially either a right-to-left or a boustrophedon script to what ultimately became

14445-421: The less prestigious colloquial registers , attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius . While often called a "dead language", Latin did not undergo language death . By the 6th to 9th centuries, natural language change eventually resulted in Latin as a vernacular language evolving into distinct Romance languages in

14580-470: The middle by a duct, the siphuncle . As the nautilus matures, it creates new, larger camerae and moves its growing body into the larger space, sealing the vacated chamber with a new septum. The camerae increase in number from around 4 at the moment of hatching to 30 or more in adults. The shell coloration also keeps the animal cryptic in the water. When seen from above, the shell is darker in color and marked with irregular stripes, which helps it blend into

14715-475: The mosasaur discovery, they have given their name to the final six-million-year epoch of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian . The traditional view of mosasaur evolution held that all paddle-limbed (hydropedal) mosasaurs originated from a single common ancestor with functional legs (plesiopedal). However, this was shaken with the discovery of Dallasaurus , a plesiopedal mosasauroid more closely related to

14850-516: The nature of mosasaur integument was mainly based on very few accounts describing early mosasaur fossils dating back to the upper Santonian –lower Campanian , such as the famous Tylosaurus specimen (KUVP-1075) from Gove County, Kansas. Material from Jordan has shown that the bodies of mosasaurs, as well as the membranes between their fingers and toes, were covered with small, overlapping, diamond-shaped scales resembling those of snakes. Much like those of modern reptiles, mosasaur scales varied across

14985-423: The nautilus consists of structures called otocysts located immediately behind the pedal ganglia near the nerve ring. They are oval structures densely packed with elliptical calcium carbonate crystals. Nautiluses are much closer to the first cephalopods that appeared about 500 million years ago than the early modern cephalopods that appeared maybe 100 million years later ( ammonoids and coleoids ). They have

15120-497: The ocular tentacles and the eight lateral digital tentacles show chemoreceptive abilities; the preocular tentacles detect distant odor and the lateral digital tentacles detect nearby odor. The radula is wide and distinctively has nine teeth. The mouth consists of a parrot-like beak made up of two interlocking jaws capable of ripping the animal's food— mostly crustaceans— from the rocks to which they are attached. Males can be superficially differentiated from females by examining

15255-474: The only living members of the subclass Nautiloidea , and are often considered " living fossils ". The word nautilus is derived from the Greek word ναυτίλος nautílos "sailor", it originally referred to a type of octopus of the genus Argonauta , also known as 'paper nautilus', which were thought to use two of their arms as sails. The arm crown of modern nautilids (genera Nautilus and Allonautilus )

15390-470: The ornamental shell is causing population declines. The threats from trade in these shells has led to countries such as Indonesia legally protecting the chambered nautilus with fines of up to US$ 8,500 and/or 5 years in prison for trading in this species. Despite their legal protection, these shells were reported to be openly sold at tourist areas in Bali as of 2014. The continued trade of these animals has led to

15525-466: The other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. Spoken Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing. For many Italians using Latin, though, there

15660-784: The past 500 million years. Many were initially straight-shelled, as in the extinct genus Lituites . They developed in the Late Cambrian period and became a significant group of sea predators during the Ordovician period. Certain species reached over 2.5 m (8 ft) in size. The other cephalopod subclass, Coleoidea , diverged from the nautiloids long ago and the nautilus has remained relatively unchanged since. Nautiloids were much more extensive and varied 200 million years ago. The ancestors of all Coleoidea (shell-less Cephalopods) once possessed shells, and many early cephalopod species are only known from shell remains. Following

15795-409: The same time period, the 2016 study found mosasaurs likely had body temperatures similar to those of contemporary seabirds and were able to internally regulate their temperatures to remain warmer than the surrounding water. The coloration of mosasaurs was unknown until 2014, when the findings of Johan Lindgren of Lund University and colleagues revealed the pigment melanin in the fossilized scales of

15930-638: The shells, corresponding to upper and lower jaws, is evidence of the bite of medium-sized mosasaurs. Whether this behaviour was common across all size classes of mosasaurs is not clear. Virtually all forms were active predators of fish and ammonites; a few, such as Globidens , had blunt, spherical teeth, specialized for crushing mollusk shells. The smaller genera, such as Platecarpus and Dallasaurus , which were about 1–6 m (3.3–19.7 ft) long, probably fed on fish and other small prey. The smaller mosasaurs may have spent some time in fresh water, hunting for food. The largest mosasaur Mosasaurus hoffmannii

16065-592: The skeleton was assembled for display prior to a 2010 reassessment of the species that found its original number of vertebrae to be exaggerated, implying that the actual size of the animal was likely smaller. Mosasaurs had a body shape similar to that of modern-day monitor lizards (varanids), but were more elongated and streamlined for swimming. Their limb bones were reduced in length and their paddles were formed by webbing between their long finger and toe bones. Their tails were broad, and supplied their locomotive power. Until recently, mosasaurs were assumed to have swum in

16200-537: The time this error was discovered, depicting mosasaurs with such crests in artwork had already become a trend. Mosasaurs had double-hinged jaws and flexible skulls (much like those of snakes ), which enabled them to gulp down their prey almost whole. A skeleton of Tylosaurus proriger from South Dakota included remains of the diving seabird Hesperornis , a marine bony fish , a possible shark , and another, smaller mosasaur ( Clidastes ). Mosasaur bones have also been found with shark teeth embedded in them. One of

16335-570: The type genus, and its close relative, Allonautilus . The fossil record of Nautilidae begins with Cenoceras in the Late Triassic, a highly varied genus that makes up the Jurassic Cenoceras complex. Cenoceras is evolute to involute, and globular to lentincular; with a suture that generally has a shallow ventral and lateral lobe and a siphuncle that is variable in position but never extremely ventral or dorsal. Cenoceras

16470-597: The venter essentially straight and has a broad, shallow, lateral lobe. The siphuncle is small and subcentral. Pseudocenoceras is found in the Crimea and in Libya . Carinonautilus is a genus from the Upper Cretaceous of India , named by Spengler in 1919. Carinonautilus is a very involute form with high whorl section and flanks that converge on a narrow venter that bears a prominent rounded keel. The umbilicus

16605-564: The vertical movement patterns of these animals are far more complex. The greatest depth at which a nautilus has been sighted is 703 m (2,306 ft) ( N. pompilius ). Implosion depth for nautilus shells is thought to be around 800 m (2,600 ft). Only in New Caledonia , the Loyalty Islands , and Vanuatu can nautiluses be observed in very shallow water, at depths of as little as 5 m (15 ft). This

16740-544: The warm, shallow inland seas prevalent during the Late Cretaceous period. Mosasaurs were so well adapted to this environment that they most likely gave birth to live young , rather than returning to the shore to lay eggs as sea turtles do. The smallest-known mosasaur was Dallasaurus turneri , which was less than 1 m (3.3 ft) long. Larger mosasaurs were more typical, with many species growing longer than 4 m (13 ft). Mosasaurus hoffmannii ,

16875-431: The water, while their tails provided strong propulsion. These animals may have lurked and pounced rapidly and powerfully on passing prey, rather than chasing after it. At least some species were also capable of aquaflight, flapping their flippers like sea lions . Early reconstructions showed mosasaurs with dorsal crests running the length of their bodies, which were based on misidentified remains of tracheal cartilage. By

17010-413: Was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, Romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which eventually led to the differentiation of Romance languages . Late Latin is a kind of written Latin used in the 3rd to 6th centuries. This began to diverge from Classical forms at

17145-426: Was high productivity in the Late Cretaceous, driven by tectonically controlled sea levels and climatically controlled ocean stratification and nutrient delivery. When productivity collapsed at the end of the Cretaceous, coincident with bolide impact, mosasaurs became extinct. Sea levels were high during the Cretaceous period, causing marine transgressions in many parts of the world, and a great inland seaway in what

17280-496: Was much more liberal in its linguistic cohesion: for example, in classical Latin sum and eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use fui and fueram instead. Furthermore, the meanings of many words were changed and new words were introduced, often under influence from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail. Renaissance Latin, 1300 to 1500, and

17415-441: Was no complete separation between Italian and Latin, even into the beginning of the Renaissance . Petrarch for example saw Latin as a literary version of the spoken language. Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the post-classical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed, that is from around 700 to 1500 AD. The spoken language had developed into the various Romance languages; however, in

17550-484: Was not actually named Mosasaurus (' Meuse reptile') until 1822 and not given its full species name, Mosasaurus hoffmannii, until 1829. Several sets of mosasaur remains, which had been discovered earlier at Maastricht but were not identified as mosasaurs until the 19th century, have been on display in the Teylers Museum , Haarlem , procured from 1790. The Maastricht limestone beds were rendered so famous by

17685-403: Was prior to the description of three additional species ( samoaensis , vanuatuensis and vitiensis ). The following taxa associated with the family Nautilidae are of uncertain taxonomic status: Nautilus are collected or fished for sale as live animals or to carve the shells for souvenirs and collectibles, not for just the shape of their shells, but also the nacreous inner shell layer, which

17820-459: Was recovered from a Prognathodon humerus dated to the Cretaceous . In 2005, a case study by A.S. Schulp, E.W.A Mulder, and K. Schwenk outlined the fact that mosasaurs had paired fenestrae in their palates. In monitor lizards and snakes, paired fenestrae are associated with a forked tongue , which is flicked in and out to detect chemical traces and provide a directional sense of smell . They therefore proposed that mosasaurs probably also had

17955-441: Was shed and the now-independent replacement tooth began to anchor itself into the vacancy. In the eighth and final stage, the replacement tooth has grown to firmly anchor itself. Mosasaur growth is not well understood, as specimens of juveniles are rare, and many were mistaken for hesperornithine birds when discovered 100 years ago. However, the discovery of several specimens of juvenile and neonate-sized mosasaurs unearthed more than

18090-482: Was shut down in June 2019), and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin. A variety of organisations, as well as informal Latin 'circuli' ('circles'), have been founded in more recent times to support the use of spoken Latin. Moreover, a number of university classics departments have begun incorporating communicative pedagogies in their Latin courses. These include

18225-419: Was the apex predator of the Late Cretaceous oceans, reaching more than 11 metres (36 ft) in length and weighing up to 10 metric tons (11 short tons) in body mass. Despite the many mosasaur remains collected worldwide, knowledge of the nature of their skin coverings remains in its early stages. Few mosasaurid specimens collected from around the world retain fossilized scale imprints. This lack may be due to

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