1.65" Fossil Plesiosaur (Zarafasaura) Tooth With Fish Verts - Morocco

Fossil Plesiosaur (Zarafasaura) Tooth With Fish Verts - Morocco #119673

This is a 1.65" long, tooth of the large dinosaur-aged, marine reptile Zarafasaura oceanis, from the Oulad Abdoun Basin in Morocco. There are a couple of stabilized cracks in the tooth and several fish vertebrae associated with it.

Plesiosaurs were long-necked marine reptiles with four flippers that appeared in the Triassic and died out along with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. They reached quite large sizes--some species as long as 17 meters--and caught slow-moving prey. Plesiosaurs breathed air and bore live young; there are indications that they were warm-blooded.

An artist's reconstruction of a pair of Plesiosaurs. By Dmitry Bogdanov

This species of of Plesiosaur was redescribed from Plesiosaurus mauritanicus to Zarafasaura oceanis in a 2011 paper which can be found at:

A NEW SPECIMEN OF THE ELASMOSAURID PLESIOSAUR ZARAFASAURA OCEANIS FROM THE UPPER CRETACEOUS (MAASTRICHTIAN)OF MOROCCO

It comes from the massive phosphate deposits in the Oulad Abdoun Basin near Khouribga, Morocco. These deposits are mined for phosphate, one of Morocco's biggest exports. The fossils are collected as a byproduct of the mining operations, saving them from certain destruction by the rock crusher.