Curious Minds Did You Know? In the Jurassic Period, most of Britain was underwater. Only Scotland, East Anglia and some small islands in the south-west remained above sea level!
Mosasaurs are an extinct group of large marine reptiles. Their first fossil remains were discovered at a limestone quarry in Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period, with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, Mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They became extinct because of the K-Pg event (Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event) at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.
Fossils are named from the Latin word fossus which literally means having been dug up. They are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants and other organisms from the remote past. A fossil normally preserves only a portion of the deceased organism and usually, that portion was partially mineralised during life such as the bones and teeth of vertebrates or the chitinous exoskeletons of invertebrates.