MCZ Specimen Sparks New Scientific Insights
From The FAS Current
MCZ collections manager Christina Byrd, at left, and fossil preparator Scott Johnston show off the Tylosaurus proriger jaw. Photo by Carlos Sanchez / Harvard FAS Staff Photographer
After 80 million years, a giant fossil jaw has quite a story to tell.
Back in the age of the dinosaurs, Tylosaurus proriger was a fearsome predator — a bus-sized aquatic reptile with a crushing snout, daggerlike teeth, and knack for swallowing prey whole. How its bones wound up at Harvard is a tangled yarn involving a Wild West stagecoach station, the early western railroads, the infamous “Bone Wars” between rival fossil hunters, and a founding scholar of natural history.
For more than 150 years, one of the most important fossils of its kind sat quietly in the drawers of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Mistakenly reported as lost, the historic specimen was largely forgotten for half a century. Thanks to an offhand social media post, it recently was rediscovered by scholars, and, once again, the extinct hunter of the ancient oceans is making a big splash.
Read more in The FAS Current: How a giant predator of prehistoric seas was discovered — twice