Write a message to Dr. Bayard Moraga explaining how the Museum of West Namibia's exhibit should tell the story of the Mesosaurus. First state your claim about how the Mesosaurus fossils got separated. Then, use evidence to support your claim. For each piece of evidence you use, explain how the evidence supports your claim.

Definition of Mesosaurus

A genus of small aquatic presumably fish eating permian reptiles of south American and southern Africa.

Mesosaurus fossils got separated through continental drift. Continental drift is the assumption that the continents of the Earth have moved relative to each other over geological time, thereby appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed.



Evidence to support my claim

It is because its remains were found in southern Africa ,and eastern south America , two widely separated regions. As Mesosaurus was a coastal animal, and therefore less likely to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, this distribution indicated that the two continents used to be joined together. Now if the continents were in still their present positions, there is no possibility that the Mesosaurus would have the capability to swim across such a large body of ocean as the Atlantic because it was a coastal animal.




Explanation:
Bever, G. S., Lyson, T. R., Field, D. J., & Bhullar, B. A. S. (2015). Evolutionary origin of the turtle skull. Nature, 525(7568), 239-242.



Wegener, A. (1966). The origin of continents and oceans. Courier Corporation.



Wintrich, T., Scaal, M., Böhmer, C., Schellhorn, R., Kogan, I., van der Reest, A., & Sander, P. M. (2020). palaeontological evidence reveals convergent evolution of intervertebral joint types in amniotes. Scientific reports, 10(1), 1-14.