A coloring page of Mosasaurus, the giant marine reptile that hunted the seas of the Cretaceous. The drawing is detailed — rows of conical teeth, paddle-shaped limbs, a deep swimming tail — and a finished color version comes with it to follow or ignore. Both pages of the PDF carry a short fact sheet printed in Japanese. Free to download and print, no registration needed.
PDF (2 pages: a finished color version and the line art, each with a fact sheet in Japanese) and PNG
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Have you seen the Mosasaurus scene in Jurassic World?
What do you make of the idea that giant reptiles were hunting in the sea while the dinosaurs walked on land?
Large animals still patrol the sea today — sharks, orcas. Do they frighten you, or fascinate you?
Can you picture what the sea looked like in the age of the dinosaurs?
Was Mosasaurus a dinosaur?
No. Mosasaurus was a marine reptile — a squamate, part of the same great group as today’s monitor lizards and snakes — that lived in the seas of the Cretaceous while the dinosaurs held the land. Recent films have made it far better known than it used to be.
How big did it get?
The largest species are estimated at around 17 metres from snout to tail, which made them the apex predators of their seas. They had powerful jaws and a second row of teeth set in the roof of the mouth, and are thought to have taken fish, ammonites and other marine reptiles.
Where did it live?
In shallow seas across much of the world in the Late Cretaceous, roughly 70 to 66 million years ago — Europe, North America and Africa among them. The first fossils came out of the valley of the River Meuse in the Netherlands, and that is where the name comes from: “lizard of the Meuse”.
