When were the first mososaur fossils discovered?
Mosasaur
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 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. If, like other marine reptiles (such as plesiosaurs), mosasaurs provided parental care is currently unknown. The discovery of young mosasaurs was published in the journal Palaeontology.[16]
History of paleontology in the United States
The first reasonably correct identification of a vertebrate fossil in North America was made in 1725, at a South Carolina plantation called Stono. There slaves had uncovered several large fossil teeth while digging in a swamp. The slaves unanimously identified the teeth as elephant molars, which they would have recognized from life in Africa. In the early 19th century, Georges Cuvier authored an 1806 translated account of the discovery at Stono. He remarked that the African slaves understood the similarity between mammoth remains and elephants before European naturalists.