Global warming? That's global warming

Rico says you don't get that much water in Kansas without melting some serious ice somewhere else:

During the late Cretaceous period, much of the North American interior, including Kansas, was covered by the Western Interior Sea, and no denizens of this sea were more feared than the mosasaurs, sleek, toothy, twenty- to thirty-foot-long marine reptiles. Among the most notable mosasaurs of prehistoric Kansas were Clidastes, Tylosaurus, and Platecarpus.
Before they were supplanted by the sleeker, deadlier mosasaurs, plesiosaurs were the most common marine reptiles of Cretaceous Kansas. Among the genera that roamed the Western Interior Sea about ninety million years ago were Elasmosaurus, Styxosaurus, and Trinacromerum, not to mention the poster genus of the breed, Plesiosaurus.
The rivers, lakes, and oceans of the Mesozoic Era were prowled by pterosaurs, which dove down from the sky and plucked out tasty fish and mollusks, much like modern seagulls. During the late Cretaceous period, Kansas was home to at least two major pterosaur genera, the long-crested Pteranodon and the big-sailed Nyctosaurus.
Many people are unaware that the earliest birds lived alongside the latest pterosaurs. Late Cretaceous Kansas was no exception; this state has yielded the remains of two important prehistoric birds, Hesperornis and Ichthyornis, that competed with their flying reptile cousins for fish, mollusks, and other sea-dwelling creatures.
Just as prehistoric birds competed with pterosaurs over the oceans of Kansas, so did prehistoric fish compete with marine reptiles. This state is famous for two plus-sized, late-Cretaceous fish: the twenty-foot-long Xiphactinus (one specimen of which contains the remains of a fish called Gillicus) and the comparably sized, plankton-feeding Bonnerichthys.
Kansas' portion of the Western Interior Sea was an extremely crowded ecosystem. You might not be surprised to learn that, in addition to plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and giant fish, this state has yielded the fossils of two important prehistoric sharks: Cretoxyrhina, also known as the Ginsu Shark, and the huge, plankton-gobbling Ptychodus.