OSAKA - A research team from Okayama University of Science and other institutions said Wednesday that fossils of a mosasaur, a large marine reptile that lived between 80 million and 65 million years ago, found in Osaka Prefecture in the early 1990s may be of a new species.
The fossils, discovered in Kaizuka between 1990 and 1992, have been kept at the Natural History Museum, Kishiwada City, in Osaka Prefecture. But a thorough analysis had not been conducted because of a lack of equipment capable of removing the surrounding rock.
As studies of mosasaurs have advanced globally in recent years, the research group turned its attention to the fossils at the museum and cleaned them, identifying the tip of the upper jaw, which had never before been found in Japan, along with other bones.
The fossils show the animal likely measured about 6 meters long and lacked a blood vessel groove seen in other mosasaur fossils, indicating it may represent a new species, the research group said.
Mosasaurs were carnivorous marine reptiles that resembled giant crocodiles but had flippers.
