Sale NH0903 Lot 251

IMPRESSIVE MOSASAUR SKELETON
Platecarpus planifrons
Late Cretaceous
Niobrara Chalk, Lane County, Kansas
This fantastic skeleton has been mounted with the utmost skill, in a dramatic, twisting pose, suggesting that this long-dead giant marine lizard is still snaking its way through the waters of some ancient ocean. The incredibly thin fragile bones have been expertly restored and mounted on a discrete metal armature. The detail is superb, from the deadly jaw with its long sharp pointed teeth, via the incredibly long slender "finger" bones on its paddles, to the beautifully regular succession of caudal vertebrae (tail bones), with striking neural and haemal arches, in ever decreasing size. The whole skeleton is colored a lovely deep red-brown with fine patination. The mosasauridae were the undisputed Emperors of the high Cretaceous seas, a family of enormous serpentine marine reptiles at the top of their food chain, and scourge of the many and varied ocean-dwelling creatures with which they shared these waters. With a heavy barrel-shaped body and powerfully propulsive, laterally-flattened tail, it knew no rivals. They were named for the river Meuse, near Maastricht in the Netherlands, where remains of this astonishing creature were first discovered in the late 18th century, but specimens have been excavated from Antarctica, Australasia, Europe, Africa and the Americas from north to south. The mosasaurs could grow up to a terrifying 55 feet in length, but the present example is from a medium-sized genus, Platecarpus sp., which tended to peak at about 20 feet long. This one measures 197 inches from the tip of the nose to the tail and the museum-standard mounting 64 inches high over a heavy metal base.
Estimate $80,000-100,000