Georgia Southern University Museum (Statesboro, GA)

[Intro text at Mosasaur]

UNCHARTED WORLDS: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GEORGIA'S COASTAL PLAIN

To get to this museum today, you crossed an ancient ocean, stepped on fossilized sea creatures, and walked where mastodons and mammoths once roamed. Your journey took you through a distinctive part of Georgia and the North American continent:  the coastal plain.

This flat, sandy terrain extends inland from the Atlantic coast up to 200 miles.  Hundreds of millions of years ago, this region was covered by a shallow ocean.

As our fossil displays show, long-dead plants, fantastical sea creatures, and fierce megafauna once thrived on Georgia’s coastal plain. Unknown species are yet to be discovered.  Welcome to an ancient, uncharted world.

 N 1.1: two-sided (duplicate sides) at Mosasaur

GIANTS OF AN ANCIENT SEA

The fearsome, toothy skeleton swimming towards you is a mosasaur – an ancient, ocean-dwelling reptile. As dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex roamed on land, mosasaurs ruled the seas. 

 Mosasaurs were common in the Western Interior Seaway, a vast ocean that once covered much of our continent. Some species of mosasaur could grow more than 50 feet long. Our mosasaur is Tylosaurs proriger. At 35 feet long, it was a formidable predator in Late Cretaceous seas. Its main predator: other mosasaurs.

 N1.2:  FROM BONES TO ROCK

About 80 million years ago, this big reptile died and sank to the bottom of the ocean in what is now South Dakota.  Over millions of years, its bones were petrified (turned into stone).  In 1978, scientists discovered the fossilized skeleton on a ranch in South Dakota’s Black Hills. One of the scientists, Dr. Gale Bishop, was a geology professor at Georgia Southern and arranged to obtain the mosasaur.  This giant reptile would be the “founding fossil” of a new Georgia Southern University Museum.

 N1.3: At crawl tube and Baby Mosasaur

A MOSASAUR BABY

Our life-like model shows how a young Tylosaurus proriger might have looked.  At less than a year old, this deep-sea baby is already six feet long! 

N1.4: at crawl tube near stomach/middle of mosasaur

FEED THE MOSASAUR!

What did mosasaurs eat?  Hmm.  Anything they could get their mouths around:  ammonites, fish, sea turtles, and other mosasaurs.  Like snakes, this giant ocean reptile had a hinged lower jaw that opened very, very wide to swallow large prey. 

Bones found near our mosasaur’s stomach tell us that its last few meals included birds, fish, and other sea creatures.  One of those creatures was a smaller mosasaur called Clidastes.

 N2.1 -- At Cretaceous dig pit

Field Site # 1: Cretaceous (Geneva, GA)

BE A PALEONTOLOGIST

Try your hand at being a paleontologist.  What can you uncover in this Cretaceous dig pit?  Hint:  Because Georgia’s coastal plain was underwater 80 million years ago, the bones and teeth you find will probably be from ancient sea creatures like the mosasaur.

Uncovering ancient fossils requires patience.  Researchers use small tools and slowly and carefully uncover buried bones inch by inch.