Scientists identify giant new mosasaur species in ancient Texas seas

Eighty million years ago, a colossal predator ruled the inland sea that once divided North America — and only now, through the patient reexamination of fossils long misread, has science given it a name. Paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History have formally described Tylosaurus rex, a mosasaur stretching up to 13 meters, whose bones had rested in collections for decades under borrowed identities. The discovery is less about finding something new in the earth than about learning to see what was already before us — a reminder that our maps of deep time are still being drawn, and