Mosasaur bite marks on a plesiosaur propodial from the Campanian (Late Cretaceous) of southern Sweden

Abstract

Although plesiosaurs and mosasaurs co-existed for about 35 million years at the end of the Cretaceous, the fossil record documenting interactions between these two groups of marine reptiles is meagre. The discovery of deeply incised scars on a limb bone of an immature polycotylid plesiosaur from the latest early Campanian (in the European two-fold division of the Campanian Stage) of the Kristianstad Basin, southern Sweden, is thus significant because it represents a rare example of predation or scavenging on an immature polycotylid plesiosaur by a large mosasaur.

Keywords:

• bite marks
• Cretaceous
• Campanian
• mosasaur
• polycotylid
• plesiosaur
• propodial
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for critically reading and commenting upon an earlier version of the text. The excavation at the Åsen site was supported by grants from the Crafoord Foundation (to JL). We would like to thank Rita Wallén for assistance during a SEM analysis of LO 10602 t.