Sachs, S., Lindgren J. & Kear, B.P. (2018) A global perspective on Mesozoic marine amniotes. Alcheringa 42(4): 457-460
—Mosasaurs are squamates that became the dominant predatory marine reptiles in the Late Cretaceous about 98–66 million years ago. Although early members of this group possessed body profiles similar to living terrestrial lizards, many of the later, more derived forms were streamlined and equipped with finlike limbs and a bilobed (hypocercal) tail fluke that would have enabled powerful swimming (Lindgren et al. 2010). Ecomorphological comparisons indicate that mosasaurs were probably very similar to modern pelagic sharks in terms of their hydrodynamic performance, and thus are convergent in both body form and locomotory style with other highly modified secondarily aquatic amniotes, including advanced ichthyosaurians (which were extremely specialised basallybranching non-saurian diapsids) and whales (Lindgren et al. 2011).
