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Some mosasaurs may have been able to launch into a sudden attack, according to a physics-based study of their tails. But the headline’s two striking details belong to different animals: the roughly 20,000-pound estimate concerns Mosasaurus hoffmannii, while the study’s estimate of a burst near 15 mph concerns a particularly large Tylosaurus. The model suggests how certain mosasaurs could move; it cannot show that a particular animal actually hunted by ambush.
What the study modeled
A Rutgers-led study published in Current Biology compared the swimming potential of four kinds of mosasaurs by reconstructing their bodies from fossil skeletons. Mosasaurs were marine reptiles—lizards adapted to life in the ocean—not dinosaurs. Because fossils do not preserve the full swimming muscles, the researchers estimated missing tail musculature using living lizards, including Komodo dragons, and tested assumptions about muscle power, tail flexibility, and water resistance. Rutgers’ account of the study describes the modeled maneuver as a “slam-start”: the animal curls its tail to one side, then sweeps it back to thrust forward. As paleontologist Kiersten Formoso put it, “It’s the tail itself pushing off the water.”
This is a reconstruction and a set of physics-based estimates, not a recording of ancient animals in motion. The results help compare what different tail designs might have enabled; they do not establish the exact speed of every individual or document a real hunt.
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Among the four modeled species, Platecarpus was fastest, Rutgers reports. Tylosaurus also had stronger modeled burst performance for its body size than Mosasaurus and Plotosaurus. The study connects the advantage in Platecarpus and Tylosaurus to a longer, more flexible section of tail that could curl farther before the power stroke.
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The comparison points to different possible swimming strengths, not a definitive ranking of hunting success:
- Platecarpus and Tylosaurus: stronger modeled bursts relative to body size, potentially useful for a sudden launch.
- Mosasaurus and especially Plotosaurus: anatomy that appears better suited to sustained swimming and pursuit in open water than to the strongest sudden bursts in this comparison.
That does not mean Plotosaurus was slow. Formoso explained that its tail was adapted for sustained swimming rather than sudden bursts. As she put it, “That doesn’t mean Plotosaurus was slow.”
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What does the 15 mph estimate mean?
Rutgers reports an estimated short burst of about 15 miles per hour for a particularly large Tylosaurus after a single tail stroke. It is a modeled, brief launch—not a cruising speed the animal could maintain. The figure should not be transferred to Mosasaurus hoffmannii or treated as a measured speed for all Tylosaurus.
The roughly 20,000-pound figure in the headline refers instead to a large Mosasaurus hoffmannii. Popular Science’s coverage associates that estimate with an animal nearly 50 feet long. Those size estimates and the Tylosaurus burst-speed estimate describe different species; they do not show that a 20,000-pound Mosasaurus reached 15 mph.
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Does this prove mosasaurs used sneak attacks?
No. The study supports an interpretation: a sudden launch could have suited Platecarpus and Tylosaurus to ambush prey, particularly in shallow seas, while sustained swimming may have favored pursuit in open water for Mosasaurus and Plotosaurus. Tail shape and modeled performance make those strategies plausible, but the model cannot establish what every animal did, how often it did it, or how a specific hunt unfolded.
The study’s contribution is a way to estimate burst swimming in extinct marine reptiles from fossil anatomy and physical assumptions. Rutgers describes it as, to the authors’ knowledge, the first study to put numbers on burst swimming performance in any marine reptile from the age of dinosaurs. Those numbers remain estimates: Rutgers’ summary reports the main findings, but detailed parameter values and sensitivity ranges are not stated there.
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Why New Jersey figures in the study
The Rutgers team also modeled exceptionally large animals, including a Mosasaurus based on a fossil held by the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. The researchers have made their modeling tools freely available for use on other extinct swimmers, according to Rutgers.
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