According to the tales of Norse mythology, a sea serpent surrounds the world, circling its waters in a continuous cycle, by biting onto its own tail. When the creature eventually releases its bite, the stories say, a world-ending battle will ensue, destroying the old and ushering in the new.
In a similar narrative of rebirth and revival, the name of this sea serpent, Jörmungandr, has recently taken on a new meaning. This year, a team of researchers gave the name to a specimen of mosasaur — a massive marine reptile — that may have met its end, around 80 million years ago, at the mouth of another mosasaur.
"From the vertebrae, we know that this thing was bitten at one time by another mosasaur," says Amelia Zietlow, a paleontologist at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History and a member of the research team. "There was nothing else we know of at that time that could have made a bite that big or that deep."
According to researchers, the newly described Jormungandr walhallaensis species was much more than a meal for other mosasaurs, however. Today, the species reveals important information about the way that mosasaurs evolved, becoming some of the biggest predators that ever swam through the world's oceans.
