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Of German princes and North American rivers: Harlan’s lost mosasaur snout rediscovered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2016

M.W. Caldwell  and
G.L. Bell Jr.
M.W. Caldwell*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Department of Biological Sciences, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E9
G.L. Bell Jr.
Affiliation:
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, HC 60-#309, Salt Flat, Texas 79847, USA
*
* Corresponding author. Email: mw.caldwell@ualberta.ca

Abstract

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The lost snout of Richard Harlan’s specimen of Mosasaurus missouriensis has been rediscovered in the vertebrate palaeontology collections of the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris, France. The specimen (MNHN 9587) bears the handwritten description, ‘Amérique du Nord. Par M. Harlan.’, which translated reads, ‘North America. By/From Mr. Harlan’. Accession information indicates the specimen was a gift to the museum prior to 1860 and was likely gifted from Harlan’s estate after his death. We examine the available history of the collection of the specimen present a description of the rediscovered snout, and demonstrate conclusively the conspecificity of M. maximiliani Goldfuss, 1845 and M. missouriensis (Harlan, 1834a) by providing a revised diagnosis of the taxon.

Keywords

MosasauridaeMissouritaxonomysystematicssynonymy
Type
Research Article
Information
Netherlands Journal of Geosciences , Volume 84 , Special Issue 3: Proceedings of the First Mosasaur Meeting , September 2005 , pp. 207 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Stichting Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 2005

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