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Mosasaurs are a group of squamates that dominated the Upper Cretaceous seas. They show a wide range of morphologies reflecting their adaptations to various ecological niches, yet no quantitative analysis of their ecological diversity exits to date. Belgium and the Netherlands are home to two of the world's largest mosasaur deposits, the first in the Mons basin and the second in the Maastrichtian type area. In this work, quantitative methods (PCoA, Cluster) are applied to a series of morphometric features and measurements taken from twenty-five specimens (representing eight species for five genera) of Belgian mosasaurs, in order to reveal their ecological diversity.
The principal coordinate analysis (PCoA), in spite of a small variance explained, made it possible to observe the great disparities shown within the morphospace of mosasaurines; testifying for example of the particularly isolated morphology of Carinodens belgicus, one of the rare taxa regarded as durophageous. These analysis also seem to indicate a convergent morphology between several specimens of plioplatecarpines and mosasaurines. Cluster analysis allow to differentiate four ecological niches, namely: the niche of the apex predators, the niche of the generalists, the niche of the soft prey specialists and the niche of the durophageous. The mosasaurines reveal a significant niche partitioning within the group, showing representatives in the four niches. This work also shows that Mosasaurus lemonnieri seems to experience a niche transition during its growth, passing through three niches during its ontogenesis. The clades Tylosaurinae and Plioplatecarpinae exhibit a low ecological diversity, and seem constrained in the niche of the apex predators for the first and in the niches of the generalists and soft prey specialists for the second. At the scale of the two basins, we observe on both sides the colonization of the four ecological niches by either identical taxa thus revealing a more cosmopolitan trend like Carinodens belgicus and Mosasaurus lemonnieri, either phylogenetically close taxa like Plioplatecarpus houzeaui and Plioplatecarpus marshi, or phylogenetically distant taxa then betraying convergences as between Mosasaurus hoffmanni and Tylosaurus bernardi.

Mosasaur, Late Cretaceous, Maastrichtian, Mons, Maastricht, Belgium, Netherlands, ecomorphology, niche partitioning --- Physique, chimie, mathématiques & sciences de la terre > Sciences de la terre & géographie physique

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"At the age of 33, Tullia Ciceronis died from complications due to childbirth. Her father, the consul Marcus Tullius Cicero, was utterly distraught, as his contemporary letters and passages in the Tusculan Disputations make clear. And in an effort to grieve, Cicero did something new in world history: for the first time, he wrote a consolation speech-not for others, as had always been done, but for himself. This was his coping strategy, and it prefigures the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and so many other thinkers throughout history who write letters to themselves. Cicero's Consolation was lost in antiquity. In the Renaissance, a philologist named Charles (Carlo) Sigoni recreated the speech. He gathered all the extant quotations and, on the analogy of restoring missing pieces of sculpture or lost paintings, he drew on everything he could find in Cicero to write a new speech that effectively recreated the lost one. And for a while, it worked. For centuries many great scholars believed Sigoni really had discovered the speech, rather than recreated it. Alas, subsequent scholarship has proven the opposite. Signoni very probably did write it. But the authorship question is less important than the contents. The speech shows that Sigoni knew all the conventions of the Consolation genre, and the historical events of Tullia's life, at least as well as any scholar then or now. It is a masterpiece: a fascinating read in Classical Latin, and it deserves a wide audience"--

Consolation. --- Tullia, --- Cicero, Marcus Tullius. --- Consolatio. --- Adolescence. --- Agamedes. --- Aquifer. --- Atheism. --- Bou Craa. --- Carbon cycle. --- Cenozoic. --- Cetacea. --- Chaldea. --- Chemical reaction. --- Christian mortalism. --- Climate change. --- Crantor (mythology). --- Critical thinking. --- Crocodilia. --- Crop circle. --- Crying. --- Deep sea. --- Drinking water. --- Ectotherm. --- Electricity. --- Fauna. --- Fertilisation. --- Fertilizer. --- Fossil fuel. --- Fresh water. --- Generosity. --- Genre. --- Gnaeus (praenomen). --- Grandparent. --- Greatness. --- Greenhouse gas. --- Grief. --- Groundwater flow. --- Groundwater. --- Herodotus. --- Historical fiction. --- Homily. --- Hydrophiinae. --- Ichthyosaur. --- In Death. --- Inner peace. --- Integument. --- Lactation. --- Late Triassic. --- Literature. --- Mammal. --- Man alone (stock character). --- Marine biology. --- Marine mammal. --- Marine reptile. --- Mesozoic. --- Metabolism. --- Microstructure. --- Mining (military). --- Misery (novel). --- Misfortune (folk tale). --- Mosasaur. --- Neglect. --- Ogallala Aquifer. --- Oral tradition. --- Our Children. --- Pelagic zone. --- Petrarch. --- Phosphorus. --- Photosynthesis. --- Plesiosauria. --- Praetor. --- Predation. --- Priam. --- Proboscidea. --- Proverb. --- Rain. --- Reptile. --- Salt. --- Screaming. --- Sea turtle. --- Seawater. --- Sirenia. --- Skeleton. --- Soft tissue. --- Soil salinity. --- Soil. --- Stoicism. --- Surface water. --- Technology. --- Terence. --- Tetrapod. --- The Masses. --- The Stages of Life. --- Theramenes. --- Thermoregulation. --- Treatise. --- Tributary. --- Tullia Ciceronis. --- Vertebral column. --- Volition (psychology). --- Water bird. --- Water supply. --- Water use.