Mosasaurus

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Name meaning	"Meuse (River) lizard/reptile" or "Lizard/Reptile from/of the Meuse River"
Code name	Mosa
Diet	Carnivore
Length	17 meters (56 feet)
Location	Seas of Europe and North America and Africa and Australia and New Zealand
Range	Isla Nublar Hawaii Pacific Ocean
Time	Late Cretaceous (Campanian to Maastrichtian), 82.7-66 Ma
Birth type	Live birth
Movie appearances	Jurassic World Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Battle at Big Rock Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Jurassic World: Dominion Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous: Hidden Adventure (Determinant)
Game appearances	See here
Toy appearances	See here

"The Mosasaurus was thought to have hunted near the surface of the water, where it preyed on anything it could sink its teeth into, including turtles, large fish, even smaller mosasaurs."

—Sarah^(src)

Mosasaurus is a genus of large aquatic carnivorous lizard from the Late Cretaceous about 70-66 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.

Characteristics

The cloned Mosasaurus retained many features of its original counterpart. 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 Mosasaurus. The Mosasaurus also had a frill running down its back and lacked a forked tongue as well as lacked a large tail fluke. The clone's colors are mostly greyish-blue with a creamy underbelly.

Size Estimates

Below is a list of size estimates for the cloned Mosasaurus from various sources:

Length	Source
16 m (55 ft)
18 m (60 ft)
22 m (72 ft)
22 m (72.2 ft)
25.9 m (84.9 ft)
36.6 m (120 ft)

Behavior

The Mosasaurus is a ferocious predator of Jurassic World that mostly has an appetite on sharks specifically, shown eating those most of the time and follow its migration path. Yet, it will eat other animals such as humans or a Pteranodon that ventured into her laggon. Despite the fact that the Mosasaurus was capable of jumping on to land, she did not seem to actively pursue humans that came close to the tank edges. It did, however, jump out of the water and grab an Indominus rex, a hybrid dinosaur that hunted for sport. As such, it could be suggested that the Mosasaur may enjoy the company of cetaceans such as orcas and whales, as it was willing to work with them to hunt the sharks rather than kill and eat the orcas.

History

Creation

Mosasaurus consuming a Great White Shark while spectators watch.

On August 25, 2000, InGen researchers while testing a prototype iron analyzer discovered traceable DNA fragments on a recently uncovered mosasaur specimen. Dr. Henry Wu believed this to be the only way of recreating aquatic organisms without extracting blood from mosquitoes trapped in amber.

Mosasaurus was successfully recreated by InGen under the wing of the Masrani Global Corporation for their new dinosaur park Jurassic World. The species created was Mosasaurus maximus, which currently is believed to be synonymous with the species M. hoffmannii, but others believe it to be a valid species.

The Mosasaurus lived in a 3 million gallon pool 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.

Jurassic World Incident

Gray and Zach Mitchell attended the Mosasaur Feeding Show and the Underwater Observatory in which they saw the Mosasaurus consume a shark.

Following the escape of The Aviary's residents from their enclosure, the Mosasaurus devoured a Pteranodon that was flying over its enclosure to capture Zara Young, also eating Zara, who was in the talons of the Pteranodon. The Mosasaurus is seen trying to eat Darius Bowman and his group, while they were in the lagoon.

The Mosasaur dragged the Indominus rex to the bottom of the lagoon, killing the hybrid.

At the end of the battle between the Indominus rex, the park's veteran T. 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, thus killing it.

I. rex Specimen Retrieval

"Relax. Anything in here would be dead by now."

—Sub Pilot^(src)

It is revealed that the individual Mosasaurus seen in Jurassic World had survived the months it has spent on Isla Nublar. It was thought to be dead when the submarine went in to collect a sample of what was left of Indominus rex. The Mosasaurus then ate the sub, along with a mercenary trying to escape on a helicopter, and when the gates were left open, it escaped the lagoon and swam into the ocean. When Darius and the group were leaving the island, the Mosasaurus attacked them and sank their ship, which lead to the six being stranded on a new island. Yaz had another nightmare of the Mosasaurus busting through the frozen lake, attempting to eat her, before she woke up and the nightmare ended. It was last seen trying to eat surfers off of a coast.

A Rising Tide

The Mosasaurus plays a central role in the motion comic, which tells the story of its attack on surfers on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii depicted at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Battle at Big Rock

Mosasaurus makes a brief cameo in the short, eating a breaching great white shark catching a sea lion during the end credits.

Jurassic World: Dominion

In 2022, the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife had confirmed sightings of the Mosasaurus somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near San Francisco, in Seattle, in the corals of Hawaii, Okinawa, Japan, Lathryn's Hook, Alaska and Auckland, New Zealand where it teamed up with a pod of orcas to target great white sharks. The Mosasaurus currently follows its main prey, the great white shark, across their migration routes. At the start of the film, the Mosasaurus is seen attacking a crab fishing boat named the Saga in Bering Sea in order to steal the crabs out of the baited traps, causing the boat to turn over, and the Mosasaurus either ate or injured the crew. The Mosasaurus is later seen peacefully mingling with a pod of humpback whales at the very end of the film.

Gallery

Videos

Jurassic World (4 10) Movie CLIP - Pterosaur Attack (2015) HD

Jurassic World (10 10) Movie CLIP - Dinosaur Alliance (2015) HD

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) - Mosasaurus Attack Scene (1 10) Movieclips

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (2018) - Welcome to Jurassic World Scene (10 10) Movieclips

Images

Promotional Images

JWFK Annual 2019 info page.

Video in Universal Studios Hollywood

Jurassic World

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Battle at Big Rock

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

Jurassic World: Dominion

Vocalizations

Behind the scenes

Concept art for breeding tank (done by Ricardo Delgado)

Concept art of the Mosasaurus Feeding Show featuring the Mosasaurus.

Before making a physical appearance in Jurassic World, there was an idea for Jurassic Park III to feature a Mosasaur breeding tank. It was included in the first draft of the script and had concept art done, but was removed in later versions of it.

Mosasaurus in the Jurassic World storyboard.

In the Jurassic World storyboard, Mosasaurus was to be depicted with a serpentine body lacking a tail fluke like pre-2014 restorations and had horizontal stripes covering its body which mosasaurs did not have. The Mosasaurus involvement in the pterosaur attack was to be different as well. Originally, during the pterosaur attack, the monorail that went over the lagoon was to collapse during the attack, dangling over the mosasaur's habitat. When a Pteranodon trying to kill a passenger desperately hanging onto the rapid transit vehicle, the Mosasaur lunges out of the water pulling the Pteranodon down into the water and the monorail with it. Several Pteranodons then proceed to attack the marine reptile in an attempt to save their own, but ultimately the Mosasaurus gets away with its kill.

Concept art.

One early concept of the Mosasaurus' enclosure was a Shark tunnel and in that concept, the Mosasaur was eating a person (possibly having fallen during the pterosaur attack) in the presence of parkgoers. Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow later came up with the idea of the Mosasaurus Feeding Show during one of his first meetings 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.

Paul Liaw of Industrial Light and Magic who sculpted the Mosasaurus 3D model used turtles, crocodiles, whales, and other animals he could find on the internet as references when creating its underbelly and back. ILM purposely made the Mosasaur in Jurassic World larger than its real life counterpart to make it look big enough for the final fight with Indominus rex at the end of the film.

The sounds of the Mosasaurus were a mix of walruses and beluga whales to give the Mosasaur weight as well as to make it more of a marine animal and not a land animal.

The scene of the Mosasaurus feeding in Jurassic World changed a total of three times out the course of the Jurassic World trailer releases.

Changes made to the Mosasaurus feeding throughout the trailer releases of Jurassic World.

It is commonly believed that the mosasaur that appeared in Jurassic Park: The Game is Mosasaurus, but the InGen Field Journal classifies the mosasaur created for Jurassic Park as Tylosaurus.

To celebrate the home release of Jurassic World in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2015, Wild Creations (who had previously created animatronic versions of the Jurassic World Velociraptor Pack in the Waterloo Station to promote the film's release in June) created a 7 meter high model of a Mosasaurus preparing to eat a shark and placed it in London's South Bank.