Tethys Sea

Late Cretaceous

Between the Jurassic and the Late Cretaceous, which started about 100 Mya, Gondwana began breaking up, pushing Africa and India north across the Tethys and opening up the Indian Ocean. During the Late Cretaceous, the Tethys Sea was home to many different animals, including marine reptiles, bony fish, cartilaginous fish, and cephalopods. The islands that were located in the northern parts of the Tethys Sea (Europe) created biodiverseecosystems that had animals that went through insular dwarfism and insular gigantism. The insular dwarfism process happened mostly to the dinosaurs that lived on the islands, like the sauropods and the hadrosaurs. Telmatosaurus is a good representation of the insular dwarfism process. While the insular dwarfism process happened to the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs that lived on the islands went through the process known as insular gigantism. Hatzegopteryx was a huge azhdarchid pterosaur that lived on the islands of the Tethys Sea. This giant pterosaur would have filled its ecological niche as an apex predator. During the Maastrichtian, the Tethys Sea had many different large mosasaurs that lived in the same geographical area and would have competed with each other. Europe had large mosasaurs like Prognathodon giganteus, P. saturator, P. sectorius, Mosasaurus hoffmannii, and M. lemonnieri. North Africa would have also had large mosasaurs like Prognathodon giganteus, P. currii, Thalassotitan atrox, Hainosaurus boubker, and Mosasaurus beaugei. The competition between many different apex predators is something we don't only see in the Tethys Sea, but also in the Western Interior Seaway.