1.9" Fossil Plesiosaur (Zarafasaura) Tooth & Fish Verterbae - Morocco

Fossil Plesiosaur (Zarafasaura) Tooth & Fish Verterbae - Morocco #192527

This is a 1.9" long, tooth from a large, dinosaur-aged plesiosaur (Zarafasaura sp.). It was collected from the phosphate deposits in the Oulad Abdoun Basin of Morocco and is still partially embedded in the rock it was found in. The rock also features multiple vertebrae from a bony fish. There is a repaired crack near the tip of the tooth, but it is in otherwise excellent condition.

Natural associations like this are becoming increasingly more difficult to come across. None of the bones/teeth in this specimen have been added/mounted to the sandstone matrix.

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.