Pliosaurs In Russia?

[-Andy-]

Does anyone know about the occurrence of Pliosaurs in Russia?

I recently acquired a lovely pliosaur tooth from Calvin from this forum, and the information given was:

Polyptychodon interruptus

Stary Oskol, Russia

Upper Cretaceous

I am curious because firstly, every single of this type of tooth are said to have came from Stary Oskol of Russia, and secondly they are all consistently listed as species Polyptychodon interruptus. However, I am not aware of any scientific papers or paleontology database listing Polyptychodon as a pliosaur from Russia. Polyptychodon is instead found in England and US. These teeth supposedly comes from an old German location. Could they be an unidentified species of pliosaur, or was Polyptychodon more wide-spread than we realized?

Thank you.

Here's a pic of a tooth that's almost identical to mine

[yzhang]

Hi Andy,

I think I once saw the pic of the tooth in your post @ fossilgrove.com

Here is an article dated back to 1860th that mentioned about Polypthychodon found in Russia:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JljzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=Polyptychodon+Russia&source=bl&ots=8i7rW76UhV&sig=kYHQwfy2iRy6EozzSe6-7Ck-NzA&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ei=fd8oU5-uJO_F0AHPtYGQDA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Polyptychodon%20Russia&f=false

[DD1991]

Pliosaurs have actually been known from Russia for over a century. Records of Jurassic pliosaurs from Russia include the type specimens of Pliosaurus rossicus and P. irgisensis, and also specimens of Liopleurodon, Peloneustes, Simolestes. The Cenomanian deposits of Russia have yielded the type specimens of the dubious Polyptychodon-like forms Neopliosaurus and Leutkesaurus. All of this information is from Storrs et. al. (2000).

Storrs, G. W., M. S. Arkhangel'skii and V. M. Efimov. 2000. Mesozoic marine reptiles of Russia and other former Soviet republics. pages 187-210 In Benton, M. J., M. A. Shiskin, D. M. Unwin and E. N. Kurochkin, (eds.), The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

[-Andy-]

Hi Andy,

I think I once saw the pic of the tooth in your post @ fossilgrove.com

Here is an article dated back to 1860th that mentioned about Polypthychodon found in Russia:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JljzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=Polyptychodon+Russia&source=bl&ots=8i7rW76UhV&sig=kYHQwfy2iRy6EozzSe6-7Ck-NzA&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ei=fd8oU5-uJO_F0AHPtYGQDA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Polyptychodon%20Russia&f=false

Thank you yzhang. You are right, that is a pic taken from fossil grove. My teeth is a fair bit bigger though, it's about the size of a Liopleurodon tooth, so it probably belongs to a 6 - 7m creature.

Pliosaurs have actually been known from Russia for over a century. Records of Jurassic pliosaurs from Russia include the type specimens of Pliosaurus rossicus and P. irgisensis, and also specimens of Liopleurodon, Peloneustes, Simolestes. The Cenomanian deposits of Russia have yielded the type specimens of the dubious Polyptychodon-like forms Neopliosaurus and Leutkesaurus. All of this information is from Storrs et. al. (2000).

Storrs, G. W., M. S. Arkhangel'skii and V. M. Efimov. 2000. Mesozoic marine reptiles of Russia and other former Soviet republics. pages 187-210 In Benton, M. J., M. A. Shiskin, D. M. Unwin and E. N. Kurochkin, (eds.), The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Ah yes, this will be an interesting endeavor, to find out the identity of my mysterious Cretaceous pliosaur.

[4circle]

Many pliosaurs (and other sauropterygia) are known from Russia. Alas, they're mainly published in Russian so they're not very widely known in the west. Bull.Rus.Acad.Sc. has some English articles, as does PAH. Post 1990, they often have English abstracts which you can usually search online, and then you can look at the pictures and use Google translate for the captions if the figure interested you. Or (as I did) befriend someone who speaks Russian, who can very quickly search for you

[-Andy-]

At the moment, I am labeling it as Polyptychodon sp.

Here's the long overdue pic.

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

On 3/30/2014 at 4:44 PM, 4circle said:

Many pliosaurs (and other sauropterygia) are known from Russia. Alas, they're mainly published in Russian so they're not very widely known in the west. Bull.Rus.Acad.Sc. has some English articles, as does PAH. Post 1990, they often have English abstracts which you can usually search online, and then you can look at the pictures and use Google translate for the captions if the figure interested you. Or (as I did) befriend someone who speaks Russian, who can very quickly search for you

 

Ammonit.ru can also be a very useful resource for Russian marine reptile teeth. The inbuilt translation-function of Google Chrome should make it easier to navigate the site...

 

On 4/6/2014 at 12:30 PM, -Andy- said:

At the moment, I am labeling it as Polyptychodon sp.

Here's the long overdue pic.

 

Just wanted to briefly remark that Polyptychodon should be considered a nomen dubium following Madzia's (2016) reanalysis of the genus based on the UK-material that helped to define it. It'd be better to class the above tooth as Brachauchenia indet. Still, a stunning tooth!

Edited May 10, 2021 by pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon

[siteseer]

At least twenty years ago, I saw maybe two large pliosaur teeth said to be from from Stary Oskol, Russia.  There were a few Russian dealers who attended the Tucson shows and even a few others like the Costa Mesa show.  Here's a link to a discussion late last year:

 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/111634-russian-pliosaur-tooth/