Could a monster be lurking in our oceans?
And no, we're not talking about the Loch Ness Monster
or the Megalodon.
We're talking about a creature you've probably never heard of,
the mosasaur.
But what's a mosasaur?
Could the mosasaur have survived the Great Extinction?
And if it did, how would it change our oceans?
This is what if, and here's what would happen if
Mosasaurus were still alive.
In 2014, a British tourist spotted a strange creature while
on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico.
It became known as the Carnival Cruise Monster, and the
description sounded a lot like a long extinct apex predator,
the Mosasaur.
But if the mosasaur had survived the extinction event which
killed off 3/4 of the plant and animal species on
Earth, then we definitely know about it.
It would have completely changed what our oceans look like
and how we use them.
In fact, if the mosasaur was still roaming our oceans,
the megalodon might never have existed.
But how can one animal have such a huge impact?
These nightmarish marine animals were actually giant lizards, kind of
like the land dwelling Komodo Dragons, but they evolved for
life in the ocean.
Their anatomy made them dangerous predators.
Imagine a lizard monster with the double hinged jaw of
a snake, massive teeth and a tail like a shark.
Oh, and they could be as large as 18 meters
long.
That's 4 meters longer than your average yellow school bus.
They basically ate anything they wanted.
No fish, dolphins, sharks, whales, or even other mosasaurs were
safe.
Fossils from this species have been found on every continent,
including Antarctica, evidence that these lizard kings dominated the oceans
in the Cretaceous period.
But they weren't also ferocious, with some species being as
small as 1m long.
Then how did they become so terrifying?
Their ancestors were more like the marine iguanas living on
the Galapagos Islands today.
Around 90 million years ago, these lizards would have ventured
into the ocean for food.
At first they stayed close to the shoreline, but as
they evolved, they started to make the open ocean their
home.
The evolution of their powerful tail vertebrae made them skilled
and speedy swimmers, helping them move further away from the
shore.
But they also remained close to the surface because, like
dolphins and whales, they needed to come up for air.
It only took 27,000,000 years for the mosasaur of Jurassic
Park to evolve.
Of course, the mosasaur in this movie is not very
accurate.
Even though a real mosasaur was smaller than the one
in Jurassic Park, it was still a very dangerous creature.
If this species were alive today, it would completely alter
our oceans.
But why would it change them?
And how would it affect the way we use our
oceans?
Much of the marine life we know today probably wouldn't
exist with the mosasaur inhabiting our seas.
They just wouldn't have stood a chance against this mighty
foe.
Instead, the fish and mammals in our oceans would look
and act much differently than they do today.
They would have adapted special traits and methods to avoid
the Mosasaurus.
One ecological theory is that predators actually drive evolution because
they force prey to adapt, and quickly.
In fact, a 2007 study found that the diversity of
marine creatures over the past hundreds of millions of years
is directly tied to interactions between predator and prey.
So our oceans might actually be even more diverse if
the Mosasaurus still existed.
But what about us?
Well, this giant lizard would make the oceans a much
more dangerous place for humans.
We would need much larger boats, Small fishing boats and
sailboats could be swallowed whole by this creature.
Ocean hobbies like sailing and fishing wouldn't be as popular,
and swimming and surfing would certainly be life threatening.
And maybe the story of Moby Dick would be about
a menacing mosasaur instead of a whale.
Thankfully, mosasaurs do not exist today or our oceans would
look completely different.
And that's a good thing.
If the mosasaurus were able to survive extinction, what's to
say other species couldn't survive too?
Just imagine pterodactyls flying overhead.
But that's a story for another What if?