Mosasaurus

This article is about the Mosasaurus, not to be confused with the  with the same name.

"Okay folks, she's a little shy so give her a hand when she comes out."

- Mosasaurus Feeding Show Announcer

Mosasaurus was a genus of large aquatic carnivore from the Late Cretaceous about 70-65 million years ago. Mosasaurus gave its name to a group of marine lizards - Mosasaurs.

Mosasaurus means 'Meuse Lizard', referring to the river near which it was first found. It fed on such prey as seabirds, sharks, large fish, plesiosaurs and even other mosasaurs.

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Creation
Mosasaurus was successfully recreated by InGen under the wing of the Masrani Global Corporation for their new dinosaur park Jurassic World.

The Mosasaurus page and the Mosasaurus Feeding Show page on the Jurassic World website give conflicting accounts about its weight. The Mosasaurus page says it weighs 5 tons while the Mosasaurus Feeding Show says it weighs 15 tons. It is most likely 15 tons because that is a real estimate of Mosasaurus' weight and it is safe to assume the Mosasaur page on the Jurassic World website is a typo. On the website, it's been confirmed that the species is Mosasaurus maximus.

Unlike the last mosasaur InGen recreated, the cloned Mosasaurus retained many features of its original counterpart, but there was a difference between the two. It also had a bite force of 13K, one pound higher than the terrestrial predator Tyrannosaurus rex that lived in the same period as the Mosasaur. The Mosasaur lived in a pool the size of 3,000,000 gallons of water located near Main Street known as the Jurassic World Lagoon and visitors could watch it feed on sharks in the Mosasaurus Feeding Show. Visitors could also view her through an aquarium below the lagoon known as the Underwater Observatory to see her.

Isla Nublar Incident (2015)
Following the escape of the Jurassic World Aviary's residents from their enclosure, Jurassic World employee Zara Young was dropped into the Mosasaurus' tank after being grabbed by a Pteranodon. The Mosasaurus then devoured the Pteranodon when it flew over the enclosure to recapture her, also eating Zara, who was in the Pteranodon ' s grip.

At the end of the battle between the Indominus rex, Rexy the Tyrannosaurus rex, and Blue the Velociraptor, the Mosasaurus beached itself to catch the hybrid in its jaws and dragged it to the bottom of the lagoon.

Trivia
All video games released before have outdated depictions of Mosasaurus showing it without a tail fluke and lacking the color scheme that all mosasaurs might have had in real life, which was black with a white underbelly.
 * The cloned Mosasaur in captivity on Jurassic World is currently the only surviving member of her genus and her family.
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Jurassic Park III: Park Builder
Mosasaurus is number 126 of the Carnivore Threes that can be created in Jurassic Park III: Park Builder.

Jurassic Park: Builder
see Mosasaurus/Builder

In Jurassic Park: Builder Mosasaurus can be created in the aquatic section of the park as a limited edition dinosaur.

Jurassic World: The Game
A Mosasaurus can be seen swimming in the Jurassic World Lagoon in Jurassic World: The Game. However, the player can not interact with it, create it, or use it in the battle arena.

LEGO Jurassic World
Mosasaurus appears in the video game LEGO Jurassic World.


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Jurassic World
A figure of Mosasaurus packaged with a human in a mini-submarine-like vehicle will be released as a part of Hasbro's Jurassic World toy line.

Behind the scenes
The Mosasaurus in is rather oversized when compared to the size estimates given for the animal both in-universe and in real life. Its head would actually be half the size of a full grown great white shark.

As revealed in an interview with Empire Magazine, Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow came up with the idea of the Mosasaurus Feeding Show during one of his first meeting with Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall. He mentions that in his original concept there is a separate facility that mass-produces the sharks the Mosasaurus eats via cloning.

The scene of the Mosasaurus feeding in has changed a total of 3 times out the course of the  trailer releases. Similarly, the scene where the Mosasaurus jumps out of the water and kills the Pteranodon has changed twice.

Behind the Velociraptor, Mosasaurus is Chris Pratt's favorite dinosaur as revealed in a Reddit AMA.

Trivia
Despite common belief, Mosasaurus is not a dinosaur; in fact, by the time it had evolved, the two lineages of reptiles were seperated by over 200 million years (as lepidosaurs like mosasaurs and archosaurs like dinosaurs diverged at the beginning of the Permian). To put this in perspective, Mosasaurus is more closely related to Titanoboa than it is to any dinosaur that ever lived.

Due to the discovery of a related species, Platecarpus, possessing a tail fluke, it is considered probable that Mosasaurus also had this feature. This makes more sense for it's niche; as mosasaurs were very likely akin to supersized sharks, an eel-like paddle tail would be inefficient for pursuit of prey. While the Tylosaurus featured in Jurassic Park: The Game lacks a tail fluke, this discovery was made only a year after Platecarpus had been found, and so it's understandable that, in that instance, they went with the eel-like tail, as they had likely already long-since finalized it's design. The Mosasaurus in Jurassic World is the first time this new reconstruction has been used in film.

It is also considered somewhat unlikely that Mosasaurus actively preyed on pterosaurs like Pteranodon very often; Mosasaurus is known to have hunted fish, turtles, ammonites, smaller mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.