"When the Volga was a sea." Chapter from the book. When the Volga was a sea When the Volga was a sea read

The Undorovsky Paleontological Museum hosted a presentation of a new popular science publication dedicated to fossil marine reptiles of the Volga region, including those found in the Ulyanovsk region. The main goal of the published book “When the Volga was a sea. Leviathans and Pilgrims" - to convey to the reader largely inaccessible information about the most interesting finds.

Scientific publications and archival data, as a rule, contain purely scientific information. But the stories of the paleontologists themselves and the circumstances of their finds, excavations and discoveries remain in the memory of only a narrow circle of people. And then, alas, they are completely lost. The purpose of the book “When the Volga was a sea. Leviathans and Pilgrims" - not only convey information about the most important and interesting finds of the remains of extinct reptiles of the Volga region, but also do it in an accessible and visual way, using a lot of illustrations.

One of its authors, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of General Geology and Mineral Resources of Saratov State University took part in the presentation of the book. N.G. Chernyshevsky Maxim Arkhangelsky. He spoke not only about the new publication, but also about the results of the work of the international team of authors on the description of fossil marine reptiles, which includes the director of the Undorovsky Paleontological Museum, Ilya Stenshin. Since 2013, a team of scientists from Russia, Belgium, Great Britain and the USA has published five publications, four of which are in British publications with a high citation index - impact factor. In 2013, the ichthyosaur Leninia stellans was described for the first time in the Ulyanovsk region (Geological Magazine), in 2014 the ichthyosaur Simbirskiasaurus birjukovi was redescribed (Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society), in 2015 the pliosaur Makhaira rossica was described for the first time (Royal Society Open magazine Science) and the ichthyosaur Grendelius alekseevi was redescribed (Proceedings of the Zoological Institute RAS journal); in 2017, the pliosaur Luskhan itilensis was described for the first time (Current Biology journal).

In addition to the author of the book, the presentation was attended by the head of the development department of the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore. I.A. Olga Borodina Goncharova, who emphasized the importance of the publication of such publications for the region and the special role of Volga region museums in preserving the fossil remains of reptiles for future generations, as well as Gleb Uspensky, who spoke about the circumstances of the discovery of the pliosaur Luskhan itilensis and its excavations. At the moment, this is the most complete skeleton of a pliosaur in Russia and one of the few such complete skeletons in the world. Continuing cooperation with the team of book authors and an international group of scientists for both research and educational purposes is one of the priorities of the Undorovsky Paleontological Museum today.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Saratov State Technical University named after Gagarin Yu.A. M.S. Arkhangelsky, A.V. Ivanov, A.E. Nelikhov WHEN THE VOLGA WAS A SEA Saratov 2012 UDC 551.461:551.76 (470.4) (0.062) BBK 26.33 (235.54) A 87 Reviewers: Doctor of Biological Sciences A.O. Averyanov, Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg; Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences M.A. Rogov, Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Approved by the editorial and publishing council of the Saratov State Technical University Arkhangelsky M.S. A 87 When the Volga was a sea / M.S. Arkhangelsky, A.V. Ivanov, A.E. Nelikhov. – Saratov: Sarat. state tech. univ., 2012. – 56 p. ISBN 978-5-7433-2469-9 ISBN 978-5-7433-2469-9 © Saratov State Technical University, 2012 © Arkhangelsky M.S., Ivanov A.V., Nelikhov A.E., 2012 © Atuchin A. .A., illustrations, 2012 This book is dedicated to the memory of the remarkable paleontologist, Honored Scientist of Russia, Professor Vitaly Georgievich Ochev. He was born on the Volga and made a great contribution to the study of Mesozoic deposits in the region. V.G. For many years, Ochev took part in excavations of marine reptiles - ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs. Largely thanks to him, the largest Volga burials of these lizards became world famous. He loved to talk about his campaigns, not only to his students and colleagues, but also to all interested people. He was sensitive to the popularization of paleontology, gave lectures in a variety of audiences, and sometimes just in the field - to collective farmers and miners. Vitaly Georgievich taught children at the school of young geologist at Saratov State University, published popular science articles, and wrote a wonderful book “The Dinosaurs Have Not Arrived Yet.” V.G. Ochev is on a par with the patriarchs of Russian paleontology A.A. Borisyak, Yu.A. Orlov and I.A. Efremov, who also believed that their knowledge should be shared with the widest circle of readers. All four tried to express and convey the charm of bygone eras. And they succeeded. Publications and stories by V.G. Ochev influenced the fate of many current geologists and paleontologists. I would like to believe that our small book will become a continuation of his ideas and will serve the common cause of popularizing paleontology. The majestic Volga sometimes stretches to the very horizon, like a sea. The other shore melts into haze, the waves run in an endless series, and enormous cliffs rise above them. Like a layer cake, the Volga Krutoyars consist of many layers of sand and clay, overflowing with fossilized shells and animal bones. These are the remains of the inhabitants of the seas of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. In those days, as now, there were waves here, only the water was salty, and sharks, stingrays and sea lizards swam in it. Huge, tens of meters, algae drifted along the current. The shadows of pterosaurs glided where the high-rise buildings of Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Penza and Volgograd stand. The sea came to the Russian Plain 170 million years ago, in the middle of the Jurassic period. Water poured in from the distant south, gradually capturing the land. Then it was not yet a sea, but rather a bay, stretching like a long tentacle from the Neo-Tethys Ocean deep into the continent. Soon the waves of another, northern Boreal Ocean moved onto the Russian Plain. In the area of ​​the present Volga region, the oceans met, the bays expanded in breadth and quickly flooded the entire Central Russia. The western coast of the Jurassic Sea passed near Voronezh, the eastern coast approached the islands of the Urals. Hundreds of square kilometers went under water - from the future Orenburg steppes to Vologda and Naryan-Mar. The sea was shallow. Its depth did not exceed several tens of meters. Numerous archipelagos, islands and shallows rose from the water, teeming with fry and shrimp. Coniferous forests rustled on the islands, herds of dinosaurs roamed, and sea lizards reigned in the sea itself. And this went on for millions of years... Paleogeographical map of the European part of Russia at the end of the Cretaceous period (Campanian and Maastrichtian centuries) 5 In the seas of the Jurassic period, the main role among reptiles was played by “fish lizards” - ichthyosaurs. Their remains are found in abundance everywhere - in the Volga region, Moscow region, and Kama region. Usually these are vertebrae that look like giant checkers. Less commonly – small teeth, limb bones, fragments of ribs and jaws. Complete ichthyosaur skeletons are rare. They were mainly found in the Volga region, in mines where Jurassic oil shale was mined. The Volga shale mines began operating in the first third of the 20th century, when the energy crisis broke out in the country and the regions began to switch to local fuel. On the Volga they began to develop deposits of bituminous shale. Like mushrooms after rain, mines sprang up throughout the Middle and Lower Volga regions - in Chuvashia, Samara, Saratov, and Ulyanovsk regions. The mines produced millions of tons of shale every year. Every day, miners manually, with a pick and a shovel, moved tens of tons of rock. In the vicinity of Syzran, Ulyanovsk, Ozinok, Pugachev, grandiose underground labyrinths were gradually dug out. Shale was a poor fuel, burned poorly, left behind a lot of soot, and had a nasty, suffocating smell. Most of the mines closed immediately after oil and gas fields were discovered in the Volga region. But even during this short period of time, countless fossil remains were recovered from them. Often the slate slabs are strewn with them as thickly as this page is strewn with letters. Geologist A.N. Rozanov once counted the number of prints on one one and a half meter slab. There were 150 bivalves alone. Lizard bones were found regularly, including entire skeletons. But usually they died during blasting and went with the waste rock to the dump. It is impossible to say even approximately how many of them were destroyed. We are talking about dozens of skeletons. Paleontologists have repeatedly asked miners to collect fossil remains, they even issued a special leaflet asking them to donate bones to scientific institutions, but it was all in vain. Director of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Yuri Aleksandrovich Orlov, recalled how during an expedition he went to a shale mine and talked with the workers. He told them for a long time about the enormous value of ancient bones. “Finds like yours serve as decoration for museums,” he said confidentially. The chief engineer of the mine responded that “only idiots go to museums”... “We saw a lot of things in the mines. At first everything was a wonder. Then they got used to it and didn’t pay attention. For what? You have to earn money. You load the slate and see a shell or fish on the ceiling. 6 If you hit it with a shovel, it will fall off. Where should I put it? If you look, you’ll throw it under your feet,” say former miners. Only occasionally they would take a “shell” or “fish” to the surface for the children to play with. Only thanks to local historians did some finds reach scientists. One of these enthusiasts was Konstantin Ivanovich Zhuravlev. His fate was not much different from the life path of other provincial intellectuals. Born into the family of a rural teacher, he went to theological school, was not ordained, and after the revolution he worked in a library and school. In the twenties, which would later be called the golden decade of local history, he headed a small museum in the city of Pugachev, Saratov region. In the summer, he traveled around the area, collecting fragments of ceramics, ancient coins, arrowheads and minerals, recording legends about tsarist times and legends about the Red Commissars. In 1926, an event happened that turned his leisurely life upside down. On the Bolshaya Chagra River near the village of Kordon, peasant women found the skull of a Trogonteria elephant. Zhuravlev was told about this by an acquaintance of his, an agent of the Khvorostyansky Criminal Investigation Department. According to him, the “head with horns” weighed as much as 12 pounds. Zhuravlev immediately went to the place of discovery. It turned out that in the spring the river bank collapsed greatly. When they were making a new access to the water, the peasant woman noticed either a stick or a stake sticking out of the clay and hit it with a shovel. The stick cracked and a white soft substance appeared inside - apparently clay. Women began to collect it to make white for their faces. Soon the men found out about this and decided to dig up the bones. The skull and tusks were very large - they were pulled out of the ground using ropes and shafts, and then taken to the volost police station. Zhuravlev wanted to check if there were any other bones in the cliff, went to the police, explained the situation and asked the prisoners for the excavation. The prisoners dug a 15 square meter hole for him right down to the water, but nothing more was found. The local historian loaded the skull onto a cart and brought it home to Pugachev at night. Somehow they found out about this in the city, and people flocked to stare at the wonder. Nothing could stop the curious - they broke into the gates, made their way through the rubble of a neighboring house, and climbed over the fence. There were especially many Old Believers who wanted to see the “imperishable relics.” Zhuravlev lectured them all day on atheism and geology, and when he was exhausted, he asked his son to continue the conversation. The stream never stopped. By evening, Zhuravlev began to fear that the skull would simply be stolen. The local historian was rescued by military personnel stationed near Zhuravlev’s house. The soldiers dragged the skull towards them. The townspeople did not want to go to their headquarters... 7 Paraophthalmosaurus (Paraophthalmosaurus saveljeviensis) After this story, Zhuravlev fell ill with “stone disease” - this is what geologists call the love of fossils. He began to wander along the banks of the rivers, went down into the gullies, gullies and quarries, and asked the peasants where they dug wells. His finest hour came in 1931, when not far from Pugachev, on the Sakma River near the village of Savelyevka, shale strata began to be developed - first in a quarry, then in mines. Soon, broken bones, broken fish prints and shells appeared in the dumps. Zhuravlev began to often go to the mine, walked through the dumps, examined the layers in the quarry, and each time found time to talk with the workers and explain how important the ancient bones were. The miners promised to take a closer look at the breed, and if they come across anything interesting, to report it to the museum. Sometimes, in fact, they reported, but rarely and with a delay. Zhuravlev collected almost the entire collection from dumps. So, in August 1932, Zhuravlev was notified too late of the discovery of what was probably the complete skeleton of a grandiose ichthyosaur. For several days, the workers, while building a tunnel, threw lizard vertebrae under their feet (they were called “carriages”), but did not attach any importance to this. One “stroller” was preserved, and it was given to a local historian. The vertebra belonged to a huge lizard. Zhuravlev calculated that the reptile reached a length of 10-12 meters. Unfortunately, the vertebra subsequently disappeared and it is impossible to verify the local historian’s calculations. It is likely that Zhuravlev somewhat exaggerated the size of the animal, although hardly by much. Most of all, he dreamed of finding entire skeletons of lizards that had not yet been found in our country. On the waste heap, Zhuravlev sometimes picked up large fragments of vertebral columns, or even jaws chopped off on both sides. Judging by the fresh chips, these were recently complete skulls. And where there are skulls, there will be skeletons. Finally, Zhuravlev found two clusters of ichthyosaur bones. From one he assembled a two-meter skeleton and exhibited it in the Pugachev Museum. It is still stored there to this day. The second accumulation was transferred to the Saratov geological exploration office. Later he was sent to the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences. Zhuravlev went to the mine for more than ten years, as long as he could. In the early forties, he became seriously ill and almost stopped leaving the city. Without his supervision, bones stopped being found, although the same layers with the remains of lizards were being mined in the mine. The bones, as before, were thrown onto the waste heap, only there was no one to collect them and they were forever covered with tons of empty clay. In 1978, after the death of Zhuravlev, in a quarry near the closed and abandoned Savelyevsky mine, schoolchildren found the third and so far the last skeleton of an ichthyosaur in these places. It is located in 9 Otchevia (Otschevia zhuravlevi) exposition of the Museum of Geography of Saratov State University. Savelyevsky ichthyosaurs belong to two species - Savelyevsky paraophthalmosaurus (Paraophthalmosaurus saveljeviensis) and Zhuravlev's ochevia (Otschevia zhuravlevi). These are medium-sized ichthyosaurs, they grew up to 4 meters in length. Judging by their body proportions, they were good swimmers, although they probably preferred to hunt from ambush. At the moment of the throw, they developed a speed of 30-40 km/h - quite enough10 to catch small fish, squid or belemnite, the main food of these lizards. Remains of “fish lizards” were also found in other shale mines, especially near the village of Kashpir near the city of Syzran, Samara Region. Slate mining began here even before the revolution. In Soviet times, three huge mines operated near Syzran. Two of them have completely depleted their deposits, the third was abandoned in the nineties due to unprofitability. 11 The first reptile bones were found here in 1936. They were found by miner Bochkarev, who was breaking off pieces of shale at a depth of 148 meters. The following year we were more fortunate - a mine employee picked up and transferred to the Kuibyshev Regional Museum a fragment of the closed jaws of an ichthyosaur. Now they are exhibited in the local history museum named after P.V. Alabina in Samara. In the mid-eighties, an almost complete skeleton of a “fish lizard” was found in the Kashpirsky mine. Contrary to custom, the chief engineer reported the discovery to specialists - geologists from Saratov State University, who immediately went to collect the bones. One of these geologists was V.G. Ochev. “We walked all of Syzran and got to the outskirts of the village of Kashpir, where we somewhat naively asked local residents how to get to the mine with the bones of lizards. Apparently they asked something wrong or the emphasis was placed incorrectly, but they only sent us to a pig farm. At the same time, one of the residents said a suspicious phrase: “It seems like the foot-and-mouth disease has already been taken out.” We realized that it was not worth focusing our search on pangolins - people are much closer to the idea of ​​foot-and-mouth disease as a disease common, in particular, among pigs... Life experience was enriched with another element of modesty and practicality,” Saratov paleontologist, professor, recalls about this trip Evgeny Mikhailovich Pervushov. Having reached the mine, the scientists went to the engineer and saw in his office a large canvas bag filled with black vertebrae that for some reason were broken in half. Geologists were lowered into the mine, to a depth of three hundred meters, to the location of the skeleton. There really were a lot of bones. They were removed according to all the rules - with thin excavation knives, removing dirt with brushes. The miners looked at the scientists in surprise. “We thought these were washers, but for some reason there were no holes for the bolts. We punched them with a pick and a chisel - there are no holes, and that’s it,” they said. The skeleton belonged to Zhuravlev's eye. Now it is exhibited in the Saratov Regional Museum of Local History: 44 vertebrae, an incomplete forelimb and a femur - a total of 78 bones... All these mines are already closed. In the Volga region there is only one small shale mine, not even a mine, but an adit - near Syzran. In it, shale is mined for the production of the medicine ichthyol. Perhaps skeletons of lizards will still be found here. Recently, an excellent imprint of a Jurassic fish was recovered from here. The treasures of other mines are lost forever... Fortunately, bituminous clays also come to the surface along the steep banks of the Volga. The largest burial place of “fish lizards” is located near Ulyanovsk, in the vicinity of the village of Undory. This is one of the world's richest sites of Jurassic sea lizards. There are so many bones 12 here that Professor V.G. Ochev dreamed of erecting a monument to an ichthyosaur in Undory. The name of Vladimir Mikhailovich Efimov is inextricably linked with this place. In the sixties, he conducted hydrogeological research in the Ulyanovsk region, became interested in sea lizards and became a paleontologist. At first, Efimov kept the bones in his apartment. His children loved to play with the stone vertebrae, building turrets and castles from them, like cubes. Then he managed to open a paleontological museum, which now houses the richest collection of bones of sea lizards. Over the years, Efimov has found the remains of hundreds of marine reptiles, including several nearly complete skulls and skeletons of ichthyosaurs. Based on material from Undor, a new genus of ichthyosaurs is described - Undorosaurus and two species of ichthyosaurs (Otschevia pseudoscythica and O. alekseevi). The diversity of Jurassic ichthyosaurs in Russia is practically exhausted by the Undorosaurs, Ochevias and Paraophthalmosaurs. Most other “fish lizards,” including some as yet undescribed species, are represented mainly by scattered remains that are difficult to identify and describe. They are usually conventionally classified as belonging to the genus Ophthalmosaurus. Such remains can be seen in many museums. For example, an incomplete skeleton of an “ophthalmosaurus”, extracted from Callovian clays in the Krasnoarmeysky district of the Saratov region, is exhibited at the Natural History Museum of the Saratov State Technical University. Cretaceous ichthyosaurs of Russia are mainly represented by the genus Platypterygius. These lizards were found much less frequently than their Jurassic ancestors. The diversity and number of ichthyosaurs decreased for a number of reasons, the main one of which was the rise of competitors - plesiosaurs and sharks. The potential evolution of ichthyosaurs had apparently dried up, and they were approaching extinction. In addition, their habitats were shrinking. Ichthyosaurs, unlike sharks and plesiosaurs, were exclusively marine inhabitants and lived in water of normal salinity. Their bones are never found in the sediments of river deltas and lagoons. And in the middle of the Cretaceous period, the Russian Sea broke up into separate, often desalinated bays, then left, then returned for a short time. In Central Russia, the last refuge of ichthyosaurs was a relatively stable basin preserved in the south, in the Volga region. The bones of one of the inhabitants of this sea were found thirty years ago in the Saratov region. In the summer of 1981 E.M. Pervushov with his school geological club came to the vicinity of the village of Nizhnyaya Bannovka, to the famous site13 of Platypterygius bannovkensis, where marine reptiles of the Cretaceous period were found. Even before the revolution, newspapers wrote that local fishermen were catching massive bones of lizards here with nets from the bottom of the Volga - mainly plesiosaurs. Then, with the light hand of the legendary Saratov local historian Dmitry Sergeevich Khudyakov, this place was called the Coast of Plesiosaurs. Schoolchildren scattered along the beach and began to look for fossils: they turned over driftwood, stirred up pebbles, looked under boulders, and wandered knee-deep in water, looking at stones. One was lucky in the end, and he looked not down like the others, but up, and noticed bones protruding from the cliff - the skull of a sea lizard. It was not possible to get them right away - the cliff was too steep, the skull was too large. Excavations were postponed until September, when a solid delegation of Saratov geologists went after the lizard. The attempt was unsuccessful. As soon as the expedition reached the place, it began to rain and rained for almost a week. The canvas tents were wet, the roads were muddy, the shore turned into a swamp, the slope became slippery like butter - no one managed to climb it. The enthusiasm of the excavators gradually melted away. Having achieved nothing, they returned to Saratov. In November, a new expedition was organized, under the leadership of V.G. Ocheva. It was attended by amateur climbers and members of the tourist club D.S. Khudyakova. The weather was cold and dry. In a couple of days, a wide pit was dug from the top of the slope. According to the plan, he was supposed to completely open the head of the lizard, but again everything ended in the wrong way. When the pit was brought down to the bones, it turned out that the skull was very large, almost two meters. The pit barely held half of it, the rest went deep into the cliff. For several days they tried to enlarge the pit, but the rock became stronger and stronger, and digging became more and more inconvenient. One evening, the most intelligent Ochev suddenly cursed loudly and with both hands broke off the part of the muzzle sticking out of the rock. The ichthyosaur turned out to be a new species and was named Platypterygius bannovkensis. It was a large reptile. The found specimen most likely reached six meters in length. Another Cretaceous platypterygius, Ocheva (P. ochevi), which was found near Voronezh, was slightly smaller. His incomplete skeleton is kept at the Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg. Later, incomplete skeletons of two more Platypterygius were dug up in the Volga region: the skull and a number of bones of P. bedengensis, as well as the incomplete skull of P. birjukovi. Platypterygius was the last genus of ichthyosaurs, and the lineage of “fish lizards” ended with them. 16 These reptiles tried to adapt to changing conditions and improved locomotion and hunting techniques. But these improvements did not help them. A skull from Nizhnyaya Bannovka told about one achievement of Platypterygius. Extensive depressions are visible on its frontal part, and a series of holes runs along the lower jaw. Dolphins have similar structures and are associated with echolocation organs. Probably, the Bannov lizard could also navigate in the water by making sounds and catching the reflected signal. In the middle of the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago, ichthyosaurs finally left the arena of life, giving way to other reptiles, among which were their long-time competitors - plesiosaurs. The suborder of plesiosaurs (Plesiosauria) consisted of two large groups of marine predators, descended from the same ancestor, but over time they moved far away from each other. One group is the long-necked plesiosaurs (Plesiosauroidea), the second is the pliosaurs (Pliosauroidea) with a short neck and large head. They differed not only in appearance, they swam and hunted differently, occupied different ecological niches and, apparently, inhabited different areas of the sea. Plesiosaurs fed on small fish and thin-shelled cephalopods. Pliosaurs were attracted to larger prey, including other marine reptiles and sharks. They had elongated, powerful hind limbs. They probably mastered the most advanced type of swimming - underwater flight, and became real sprinters of the Mesozoic depths. At a short distance, pliosaurs could develop significant speed, but they may have preferred to hunt from ambush, overtaking the prey with a powerful throw from the depths to the surface of the sea. Most likely, they preferred open sea areas, away from islands and lagoons. Long-necked plesiosaurs with short hind limbs and elongated forelimbs did not swim very fast. Biomechanical experiments showed that they could not “fly” in water and, most likely, moved like a California sea lion - with powerful strokes of both limbs back and forth. However, they had nowhere to rush. Plesiosaurs, like airships, hung motionless in the water column and, bending their necks, collected carrion and caught squid and fish swimming past. Their long neck, thanks to the platycelial vertebrae (that is, vertebrae with flat articular surfaces), had relatively good flexibility. Most plesiosaurs preferred shallow waters and the upper layers of the water column. Only a few, like Trinacromerum, learned to dive to great depths, where they prowled in search of giant cephalopods, like sperm whales. This is indicated by avascular non-17 18 Liopleurodon (Liopleurodon rossicus) 19 crosis - pathological changes in bone tissue associated with high pressure in the water column... Plesiosaurs most likely laid eggs on the shore. Here, in shallow water, they swallowed stones, sometimes in large quantities - they are found in the stomach area. Previously, it was believed that these stomach stones, or gastroliths, were needed for grinding prey or as ballast when swimming, but recently it has been hypothesized that with their help plesiosaurs replenished the lack of mineral reserves in the body. Many modern animals do this too. Professor V.G. Ochev joked that plesiosaurs are the biggest losers among extinct animals. They were almost always unlucky. The history of their study is a chronicle of failures that began one and a half hundred years ago and continues to this day. In 1869, the English paleontologist Richard Owen was sent from New Zealand a large collection of plesiosaur bones. On the way, the ship sank. In 1906, in a slate quarry near the German city of Holtzmaden, workers crushed and threw into a dump the skeleton of a Jurassic plesiosaur. It was possible to piece it together. The skeleton was exhibited in the Stuttgart museum, where he died during World War II under Allied bombs. Russian lizards are no exception. A hundred years ago, geologist P.A. Pravoslavlev, who worked in Novocherkassk, was brought large bones of a lizard. Pravoslavlev decided to show them to his British colleagues and sent them to London. Soon a revolution broke out in the country, the government changed, and the Civil War began. The bones were never returned... In the shale mines of the Volga region, several supposedly complete skeletons of plesiosaurs were blown up - scientists occasionally got only fragments, including from real giants. Soon after the end of the Great Patriotic War, an employee of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences A.K. Rozhdestvensky found fragments of the skulls of two huge pliosaurs on mine dumps in Buinsk (Chuvashia) and Ozinki (Saratov region). Judging by the fresh fractures, the skulls were intact until recently. Both lizards turned out to be Liopleurodon rossicus - the largest predators of the Jurassic seas. They grew up to 16 meters in length, weighed 50 tons, and this, apparently, was not the limit. Some bones suggest that larger specimens were encountered, although it is unlikely that Leopleurodons reached 25 meters, as stated in the TV series Walking with Dinosaurs. Nowhere else, either in Eurasia or in the New World, have bones belonging to such large pliosaurs been found. Probably, the skeleton found in the early nineties in the Kashpirsky mine belonged to Liopleurodon. While breaking shale, the kombay20 bucket came across a huge stone. The teeth scratched stripes along it with a grinding sound, and sparks rained down. The worker climbed out of the cabin and examined the obstacle - a large nodule with black bones sticking out of it. The miner called the engineer upstairs. Work was suspended and employees of the local history museum were called. They photographed the skeleton, but did not dig it up, deciding that it would take too much time. The mine management did not insist; the face stood idle for a day. The find was lined with explosives and blown up. The debris was thrown onto the waste heap... Only one skeleton from the mines fell into the hands of scientists - thanks to the same local historian Zhuravlev. In the Savelyevsky mine, the bones of plesiosaurs were found less frequently than the remains of ichthyosaurs, and usually in the form of fragments, sometimes very large. One day Zhuravlev picked up a half-meter-long fragment of the lower jaw from a dump, from which fragments of teeth were sticking out. During the life of the lizard, they reached about twenty centimeters in length. And these were the posterior maxillary teeth! In the front of the jaw they are much larger. One can only guess what kind of palisade adorned the tip of this pliosaur's snout. The skull itself, apparently, was three meters high... At the beginning of March 1933, Zhuravlev was very lucky; he made his best find - the skeleton of a pliosaur, approximately half preserved. The left flippers, the middle part of the skull, several vertebrae and ribs were missing. The bones lay in hard rock. Without any experience, Zhuravlev managed to prepare and independently assemble a six-meter skeleton of a lizard. Thus, in the provincial town of Pugachev, the only skeleton of a pliosaur in the country appeared. The lizard was described by paleontologist N.I. Novozhilov, now it is called the Irgiz pliosaurus (Pliosaurus irgisensis). In the forties, the skeleton was sent to the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, where it wrote a new page in the chronicle of plesiosaur failures. Almost all the bones were composed of the mineral pyrite, which easily decomposes in air, turning into a foul-smelling gray powder. This mineral is a real curse of paleontology. He destroyed more than one unique specimen. The skeleton of the Irgiz pliosaur was also badly damaged. A sad fate haunted not only the Jurassic, but also the Cretaceous plesiosaurs. Forty years ago, near the village of Zatolokino in the Bekovsky district of the Penza region, there was a small quarry where gray-yellow slabs of sandstone were mined and crushed in threshers. The resulting crushed stone was used to fill the surrounding primers. 21 In the summer of 1972, a large block with a strange convex pattern on the surface was found in a quarry. The workers were delighted: there was clay, puddles and dirt all around, and they could throw the stove at the change house and clean the soles of their boots on it. Some time later, the worker, wiping his feet, noticed that strange lines formed a whole picture - the head of a lizard. After some thought, he called the local museum. Local historians arrived at the quarry, cleaned the slab of dirt and were amazed to see an almost complete imprint of the skull, spinal column and front flippers of the plesiosaur. When asked “where is the rest?”, the workers silently nodded towards the crusher. "Rug" moved to the museum. The bones were very fragile and simply crumbled. All that remained were prints on the sandstone. According to them, Professor V.G. Ochev described a new lizard, which received the name Georgiasaurus Penza - Georgiasaurus pensensis (in memory of Ochev's late father). It was a Late Cretaceous lizard from the family Polycotylidae. Until recently, they were considered pliosaurs, but research over the last decade has shown that they are more closely related to long-necked plesiosaurs. Georgiasaurs grew up to 4-5 meters in length. Judging by the size and proportions of the limbs, they were quite strong swimmers and lived in the open sea. These lizards ate mainly small fish and cephalopods, although they did not disdain carrion that floated on the surface of the sea. Their teeth are versatile, they can both pierce and tear prey. Remains of polycotylides close to Georgiasaurus were also found in the Saratov region near the villages of Shirokiy Karamysh and Beloe Ozero, Lysogorsk region. Together with the Georgiasaurs, elasmosaurids (Elasmosauridae) swam in the Russian Sea - huge lizards with an unusually long neck and small head. They reached 14-16 meters in length. Elasmosaurs, be22 Georgiasaurus pensensis, probably preferred shallow coastal waters, warmed by the sun and teeming with small animals. Complete skeletons of Cretaceous plesiosaurs have not yet been discovered in Russia, but many scattered remains have been found, especially in the phosphorite horizons of the Lower Volga region, which are replete with bones of elasmosaurids and polycotylides. Sometimes from one square meter you can collect six large, fist-sized, lizard vertebrae. There are also more valuable finds. Thus, near the village of Kologrivovka in the Lysogorsky district of the Saratov region, an incomplete vertebral column of an elasmosaurus was found. Now it is kept in the Natural History Museum of SSTU. 23 Elasmosauridae The richest locality of remains of Cretaceous plesiosaurs in the Volga region was discovered in 1992 by an expedition of Saratov State University. It is located in the town of Bely Klyuch near the village of Malaya Serdoba, Penza region. Elasmosaurs and polycotylides were the last plesiosaurs. Towards the end of the Campanian century the group fell into decline. Recent newcomers - mosasaurian lizards - began to play the main role in the seas and oceans. Mosasaurs mastered the sea in the second half of the Cretaceous period. The bones of one of the most ancient mosasaurs were found in Saratov, in an abandoned quarry on the slope of Bald Mountain. A long time ago, the large quarry pit was overgrown with grass. Only here and there is sand visible through it, in which a small layer of pebbles and phosphorites is noticeable. These are traces of a chalk beach, where all kinds of garbage were washed down from the sea: dead fish, corpses of lizards, pterosaurs and birds, mollusk shells, pieces of algae, fragments of trunks. Looking through such an antediluvian dump, you can find a lot of interesting things... In 1993, during an excursion of the paleontological circle of Saratov State University, a small, six-centimeter bone fragment was found in a quarry. The schoolchildren exchanged the find to collector A.V. Lapkin for some other fossil. This began the bone's long journey across the country. First she ended up at the Department of Historical Geology and Paleontology at Saratov University. From there it was taken to the Paleontological Institute in Moscow, where it remained for several years until it was transferred to the Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg. There have been many speculations about whose bone this is. As a result, it turned out that this was a fragment of the jaw of a mosasaurus - an extraordinary find, since it was found in Cenomanian deposits formed at the very beginning of the Late Cretaceous era. The bone belonged to one of the earliest known mosasaurs. It lived about 95 million years ago and was small in size, about two meters in length. Its closest relatives are the mosasaurs-Russellosaurus (Russellosaurus) that lived at the same time in Texas. The descendants of these lizards quickly settled throughout the planet: their remains are found everywhere - in American deserts, in the fields of New Zealand, in the quarries of Scandinavia. They also swam in the Russian Sea, which in the second half of the Cretaceous period rapidly decreased in size. Conditions suitable for sea lizards were preserved only in the lower reaches of the future Don, in the middle and lower reaches of the Volga. Mosasaurus bones have been collected here for more than a hundred years. 26 Carinodens At the beginning of the 20th century, a complete skeleton of this lizard was apparently dug up in the Saratov province. But it was not scientists who found it, but peasants. They broke out the blocks with bones and decided to sell them to a glue factory. Such factories produced smoke in many peasant areas. They used the remains of cows, horses and goats to make glue, soap and bone meal to fertilize the fields. They also did not disdain fossil remains. In the Ryazan province, a bone factory once bought four skeletons of big-horned deer for processing. 27 Hoffman's Mosasaurus (Mosasaurus hoffmanni) But only the Saratov men thought of using the completely fossilized remains of the lizard for soap. The factory would probably have rejected such a curiosity. However, the skeleton was not taken there. The bones of a mosasaurus were lying in a barn that unexpectedly burned down. Only a few vertebrae remained from the lizard, which eventually fell into the hands of scientists. Soon another mosasaurus was found in the Volga region. Fate treated him more kindly. Early on an August morning in 1927, on the outskirts of Penza, not far from the ancient cemetery of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, a man with a backpack on his shoulders appeared - political exile Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vedenyapin. He descended into the Prolom ravine, where a small shooting range was located: the Red Army soldiers learned to shoot machine guns here. Their mentors advised them to represent British ministers at the target sites, and the ghostly Chamberlains died in their hundreds at the ravine wall. On this day there were no exercises and in the ravine one could only meet boys running for shell casings and residents of neighboring houses digging sand for household needs. Vedenyapin had already lived in Penza for two years. A former member of the KOMUCH government during the Civil War and a close friend of Azef, the revolutionary revolutionary did not come to the court of the new government. After his arrest and several years in prison, he was exiled to Penza. Life here was boring. Vedenyapin worked as a statistician, in his spare time he wrote notes in the journal “Katorga and Exile” and wandered around the surrounding area in search of fossils. He walked along the slope, picking up fragments of shells of large Inoceramus mollusks and the ubiquitous “devil's fingers” from the ground. Suddenly I noticed that in one place the plumb line of the ravine had been knocked out by bullets and was completely crumbling. Below among the grass lay a scattering of bone chips. Vedenyapin collected the debris and climbed onto the cliff to see where it fell from. It didn’t take long to search; huge bones of some kind of lizard were sticking out of the sand. The exile immediately went to the local museum, but the geologist was away, and the other employees were not impressed by the news about the bones. Then Vedenyapin gathered his friends - workers from the pipe plant, several hunters - and began to dig out the lizard on his own... A few days later, a large hole gaped at the top of the ravine. The bones lay at a depth of seven meters. To get them, significant financial costs were required. The local historian turned to the authorities for help. The provincial executive committee met him halfway and gave him a hundred rubles from funds intended for the improvement of the city. Soon the whole of Penza was gossiping about the lizard. Rumors circulated one more absurdly than the other, no one understood anything. Someone claimed that they had found the grave of a mammoth and the bones of an ancient man. Someone said that they were digging either a sea frog or an antediluvian hippopotamus. In one church, a priest preached a sermon that the bones belonged to an ancient beast that did not fit into Noah’s ark. There were also those who, when mentioning excavations, scolded scientists at all costs, believing that they had nothing to do but dig for nonsense. Crowds of people flocked to the ravine every day, especially on weekends. Vedenyapin gathered groups of 30-40 people and gave lectures about the geological past of the province. Some listeners offered their help, removed sand from the excavation site, and dug trenches around the bones. There were also hooligans. They crowded into the excavation site, interfered with the work, broke the finds, fiddling with them in their hands. In the confusion, a couple of bones were stolen, and Vedenyapin asked the police to send a squad to guard the lizard. This did not help - several pieces of debris disappeared again during the night. Then a Red Army patrol was sent to the excavation site. Soldiers with rifles on their shoulders were on duty in the ravine around the clock. The main Penza newspaper, Trudovaya Pravda, decided to rein in the hooligans. Between notes about treacherous priests, how to set up a shooting gallery in the village, and where the butter and sugar had disappeared, a call appeared: “We kindly request those present not to interfere with the work and comply with the requirements of those leading the excavations!”... The bones were poorly preserved, so friable that fell apart from a simple touch. I had to take them out along with the sand and clean them in the museum. To understand the intricacies of preparation, Vedenyapin went to pharmacies, found out a recipe for an ointment to fix the bones, but in the end he limited himself to ordinary wood glue. Every piece of bone was thickly soaked with it. When thirty cubic meters of sand were dumped into the dump, the lower jaw of the lizard appeared. It was dug into a trench. It turned out to be a kind of table on which lay a giant bone covered with rock. They did not take it out, for fear of breaking it, and hastily telegraphed the Academy of Sciences with a request to send specialists. In the meantime, a tarpaulin was stretched over the jaw. It was not easy to get it. Vedenyapin had to visit 12 organizations before he was given a certificate to receive a tarpaulin. The sentries were left at the excavation site. This was correct - the townspeople, having heard that a “lizard’s head” had been dug up near the cemetery, staged a real pilgrimage to the ravine. “On the last Sunday, up to 10 thousand people were at the excavation site. The Belin Library took advantage of the crowd of people and threw in a flying library with books about fossils. These 30 books aroused enormous interest among the population in fossil animals,” wrote Trudovaya Pravda. In early September, the chief preparator of the Geological Committee, N.P., arrived in Penza. Stepanov with his assistant G.M. Kotov and immediately “began work on exposing the mosasaurus and removing it.” It was necessary to quickly dig up the lizard before the slope collapsed from the rains. The military also asked us to hurry up - the machine-gun shooting range had been idle for half a month. We worked from 5 am to 6 pm. In a couple of days, the jaw was completely cleared of debris. “The impression from her is this: against a greenish-gray background, she stands out like an ornament,” wrote M. Nikolaeva, an employee of the local history museum. 19 large teeth protruded from the jaw, clenched at the sides. Three more teeth, which had fallen out by the roots, lay nearby. There were also several individual bones - a shoulder blade, vertebrae and ribs - all of them lay in a heap near the jaw. There were no other bones, the skull was incomplete. The jaw was packed in a large box and taken out on a cart to the museum. It could only be processed by specialist preparators, of whom there were none in Penza. In the hands of amateurs, the bones could have died, and they decided to transfer them to the Geological Committee, and the regional museum received an exact plaster copy of the find. Museum geologist Anton Antonovich Shtukenberg wrote an accompanying note with a brief history of the discovery of the Penza mosasaurs: “The remains of the mosasaurus are found in sandy-clayey rock, used by the population when constructing furnaces. The first discovery of eleven vertebrae was made on the former Dvoryanskaya (now Krasnaya) street while digging a cellar in 1918. Then in 1925, on the territory of the city in the Prolom ravine, a part of the right branch of the lower jaw, two parietal bones, a quadrate bone and several teeth were found. In 1920, one tooth was also found in the same layers 10-12 versts from the city to the south. Findings would have been more frequent if the bones had resisted the shovel; They are so soft that the worker does not notice them when removing the clay, so special searches for these remains are required. The skull and other bones, which were sent to the Geological Committee, were also found near the Mironositsky cemetery - between the root well and the Prolom ravine. Fragments of bones, coprolites, etc. were also found here. What about continuing excavations at the site of the remains found in 1927, the Regional Museum cannot carry them out due to lack of funds.” Now the jaw is on display at the Central Research Geological Exploration Museum named after Academician F.N. Chernyshev in St. Petersburg. 31 Clidastes Metriorhynchidae It belonged to Mosasaurus hoffmanni, one of the latest and largest mosasaurs: an eighteen-meter specimen of this species was excavated in the Netherlands. The Penza lizard was smaller - about ten meters in length. Biomechanical reconstructions showed that Hoffmann's mosasaurs swam, writhing their whole bodies - like snakes and eels, and during the throw they reached a speed of 20 kilometers per hour. It is believed that their vision was weaker than that of other mosasaurs. They may have relied more on their sense of smell. Vedenyapin's find is the most complete remains of a mosasaurus excavated in Russia. Usually there are teeth and scattered bones. One of the richest locations of mosasaurus remains is located in the Volgograd region, not far from the Polunino farm, right on the collective farm melon patch. Among the cracked lumps of hot earth, near the watermelons, lie dozens of reptile teeth and vertebrae, rounded to the state of pebbles. Volgograd paleontologist and geographer Alexander Arkadyevich Yarkov has been collecting them for many years. His collection contains remains of representatives of almost all subfamilies of mosasaurs. The teeth of mosasaurs are especially interesting. They clearly show that in the second half of the Cretaceous period, these lizards filled many ecological niches and hunted any living creature, from crayfish to reptiles. Carinodens used its flattened teeth to break mollusk shells and crab shells. Clidastes and Plioplatecarpus chased cephalopods, fish and turtles. They were not interested in large prey - they hardly exceeded 5 meters in length. Apparently, they were excellent swimmers (unlike the giant mosasaurs) and mastered the technique of underwater flight, cutting through the waters like penguins and sea turtles. The diet of Hoffmann's mosasaurs consisted of large ray-finned fish, sharks, swimming birds and lizards. On their lower jaws there are traces of intravital fractures: this suggests that they tried to cope with even larger prey than themselves. Mosasaurs disappeared at the turn of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, along with dinosaurs and many other animals. As one old Soviet book said, these “lizards with their gigantic bodies and small brains were unable to adapt to new living conditions; they suffered severe hardships and began to die out”... The place of the mosasaurs was taken by sharks and whales, although some reptiles also tried to develop the vacated niche. Crocodiles, who swam the seas since the Jurassic period, had a great chance. However, fate decreed that they always remained in the shadow of more successful marine reptiles. While remains of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs are found regularly, the bones of saltwater crocodiles were found only twice in European Russia. On the beach of Khoroshevsky Island, which before the construction of the Balakovo hydroelectric power station was located in the Khvalynsky district of the Saratov region, they picked up a vertebra of a metriorhynchidae - crocodile, 35 Protostegidae, well studied thanks to complete skeletons from Europe. Instead of paws, it had flippers, its tail ended in a fin, and its long jaws contained thin awl-shaped teeth. Individual crocodile bones V.M. Efimov discovered in the Ulyanovsk region. Several more vertebrae, possibly belonging to saltwater crocodiles, were discovered in Chuvashia and the Volgograd region, but they have not yet been properly studied. There were also turtles in the shadow of the lizards. They mastered the sea in the Triassic period, and in the Cretaceous they were found almost everywhere in the world. Some of them were monstrous in size. In the desert regions of the United States, many remains of the mega turtle Archelon (Archelon ischyros) - the size of a passenger car - have been collected. This giant was part of the Protostegidae family. In the Cretaceous period, protostegids also swam in the Volga region, reaching one and a half meters in length, with a leathery shell. Their lifestyle was most likely the same as that of modern sea turtles. Turtles are generally very conservative animals. Perhaps protostegids also migrated thousands of kilometers, guided by the Earth's magnetic field and, like Ridley's turtle, laid eggs on the shore once a year. Their migration routes could lie through the islands that were part of the Volga archipelago. The jaw system of protostegids was adapted for crushing the shells and shells of invertebrates, as well as for eating soft food - jellyfish and algae. Another conservatives swam in the Mesozoic seas - sharks, which had changed little over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. The most significant change in the history of sharks occurred in the Cretaceous period - the structure of their teeth radically changed. The teeth of Jurassic sharks were the same as those of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, with a primitive flat root from which a dental crown rose - awl-shaped, triangular or rounded. During the Cretaceous period, sharks appeared with teeth growing from an arched root that resembled a crescent. Thanks to this, the teeth gained additional strength and began to change faster and easier. The reason for these innovations could be changes in the food supply: cephalopods died out, their place was gradually taken by faster and more maneuverable fish, which were more difficult to hunt. Modification of teeth and the decline of sea lizards contributed to the rise of sharks. 38 In the Jurassic, they were predominantly small predators, a threat to fry and snails, and rarely grew even to two meters. But already in the middle of the Cretaceous period they began to compete in size with lizards. The sharks grew to 4-5 meters, their diet became richer - it included not only fish, but also birds and marine reptiles. Along with sharks, other fish experienced their heyday. In the Cretaceous period, in the Volga region there were giant stingrays up to 2 meters long and huge predatory bony ones that reached three meters in length - mostly large teeth were preserved from them. The ecosystem crisis caused by the decline of cephalopods allowed them all to gain a foothold at the top of the food pyramid and remain there until today. Cephalopods began to decline in the second half of the Cretaceous throughout the planet. Their reign, which had lasted more than 350 million years, was ending. In the Mesozoic they were one of the few old-timers on the planet. The first cephalopods appeared in the Cambrian seas, 500 million years ago. Over time, some groups died out and were replaced by new ones. The Jurassic and Cretaceous periods saw the flourishing of belemnites and ammonites. Millions of individuals swam in the seas all over the planet and were the main link in the then food chain. Throwing a fishing rod into the Jurassic Sea, it would be unlikely that you would be able to catch a fish - you would most likely catch a belemnite on the hook. Belemnites looked like squids. What is preserved in the fossil state is mainly the rostrum - part of the internal skeleton located in the tail. Long pointed rostra look like a claw. A shallow groove runs along their underside, like on the claws of cats and dogs. This feature has served as the source for many legends in which the rostra are called “devil's fingers,” the fingers of the devil, gnomes or merman. In the Saratov region they were known under the name “clown finger”, in the Astrakhan region - “clown finger”. The Chuvash called them “fingers of Keremet” - a deity who, under the influence of Christianity and Islam, acquired obvious demonic features. In some places, entire myths are written about how evil spirits lost their fingers. The Komi were told that the supreme god Yong once decided to rid the world of devils and turned into an old potter. He sat down by the road along which a crowd of demons was wandering. Noticing him, the devils began to boast of their strength, swelled, and grew to the clouds. 39 Cartilaginous fishes of the late Jurassic period: Orthacodus attacks a chimera (Callorhinchus), in the distance polygill sharks (Pachyhexanchus) hunt fish Ammonite Quenstedtoceras attacks a relative The old man asked if they were powerful enough to fit into three small pots ? The demons turned into midges and flew into the vessels, and Yong plugged the pots with corks and began to bury them in the ground. One pot slipped out of his hands and broke, and the frightened demons scattered so quickly that they broke off their claws, which now lie along the river banks. In the Ryazan region they said that in time immemorial the devil wanted to steal the land, but as soon as he put his claws into it, they petrified and broke off. In Ukraine, there was a story about how demons dropped from the sky clung to the clouds, and the Archangel Michael had to cut off their fingers with a sword... The appearance of Jurassic belemnites and squids is quite well known due to complete imprints of their soft bodies, found mainly in Europe. In Russia they are extremely rare, less than a dozen specimens are known. In the Ryazan region, half a century ago, a pair of unusual prints were found in Jurassic sandstone, which could have been the ink sacs of some cephalopods. 42 Several years ago, on a tributary of the Volga River, the Unzhe River, near the abandoned village of Mikhalenino, a slab of slate was found with imprints of two squid heads. One still has small hooks on its tentacles. The remains of their torsos were also found - with ink sacs, fins and traces of powerful muscles. Ammonites were less fortunate in this regard. Not a single imprint of their soft body has been preserved; even the exact number of their tentacles is unknown. This is quite surprising. All over the world, shales of the Jurassic period are often filled with imprints of ammonite shells; entire slabs are strewn with crushed round pieces (in Unzha they are called “icons”). Most likely, the ammonite’s body was immediately drawn into the shell after death and decomposed inside. There could be no imprint left on the bottom. The Jurassic crayfish attacked the ammonite. But traces of their lifetime coloration are known. Several beautiful painted specimens were found in a quarry near the village of Dubki, Saratov region. Judging by them, the ammonites looked rather modest; their shells were decorated with even longitudinal or transverse stripes. Occasionally, shells with traces of bites and diseases are also found. Some are swollen with large cones, on others all the furrows are filled to the side, on others sections of the shells are torn off or pierced. Many shells are damaged on the outer edge of the spiral, which was facing the bottom during swimming. According to Saratov paleontologist V.B. Seltzer, these wounds could have been left by large Jurassic crayfish, which did not miss the opportunity to “knock” the ammonite to the bottom and feast on its soft body. In addition to crayfish, cephalopods were hunted by fish, lizards, and their own relatives. It is possible that ammonites and belemnites were cannibals. Some sawtooth-shaped fractures on ammonite shells are shaped most closely to the “jaws” of the same ammonites... Perhaps the mollusks inflicted wounds on each other during the fight for females or for territory. In the Volga region, ammonites have long turned into a kind of mineral resource. Due to their good preservation and beautiful appearance, they have become a hot commodity at paleontology fairs around the world. For a hundred years now, thousands of them have been mined for sale every year. Even in the classic pre-revolutionary reference book “Russia” it was said that in the vicinity of Syzran “local peasants collect fossils by the pounds and sell them to every traveler.” Since then, little has changed, except that ammonites began to be mined in other places. In the nineties, the market received mainly mother-of-pearl pyrite shells from a clay quarry near the village of Dubki. In many Western museums, the number of specimens from Dubki reaches several thousand shells. Now the location has been given the status of a natural monument of federal significance and mining is prohibited here. More expensive, a kind of elite, were the large shells of the Lower Cretaceous Spitoniceras, filled with honey-yellow crystalline calcite, which received the trade name “simbircite”. The larger the size of the Spitoniceras, the more expensive it is. Sometimes their shells reach half a meter in diameter. And this, apparently, is not the limit. During the Cretaceous period, ammonites often grew to enormous sizes. Known shells are two meters in diameter. The largest (Parapuzosia seppenradensis) was caught in a quarry near the German city of Münster in 1895. It weighed three and a half tons and during excavation it fell into seven pieces. When it was collected, it was found out that the preserved part of the shell reaches almost two meters. German scientists did not become modest and believed that during the life of the mollusk it was much larger - about two and a half meters in diameter. Supergiants were probably also found in the Russian Sea. There has long been a story among ammonite lovers that in a ravine near Sengilei, Ulyanovsk region, they once saw a smooth shell sticking out of a clay cliff. A small fragment protruded out. Judging by its size, the shell must have been more than two meters in diameter. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get her out. It would be necessary to carry out full-scale excavations with the overburden of large sections of the rock, and in order to lift the shell from the ravine, it was necessary to rent a tractor. As a result, the ammonite remained in the ravine. In addition, in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of the Volga region, fragments of large, straight, like a stick, shells of baculite ammonites (Baculites) are found. These fragments look like pieces of pillars. Judging by them, the Volga baculites grew up to two meters. Whole shells of this size were found in the USA, in the state of Wyoming. Ammonite shells are of interest not only to researchers and fossil hunters. Ordinary people have also paid attention to them for a long time. 46 Among the Volga Bulgars they were considered a snake stone - a petrified snake curled into a ball. They were applied to sore spots to cure ailments. In the Trans-Volga steppes, shepherds still call ammonites “suns”: the grooves on the shells diverging from the center look like the rays of the Sun. In Chuvashia, ammonites bear the unassuming name “selek khurane” - “kettle of snot”. Crystalline deposits of calcite inside the shell sometimes actually resemble yellowish-green translucent snot. Barge haulers called ammonites and the huge nodules in which they were found “Razin’s loaves,” and said that the damned robber gnaws them at night instead of bread. Such nodules are real mass graves of the Mesozoic fauna. They are often chock-full of shells of cephalopods and bivalves, and rostra of belemnites. Sometimes among the remains of invertebrates one comes across shark teeth, bones of sea lizards, or even more interesting things. In 2005, paleontologist V.M. Efimov dissected a concretion from the vicinity of Undor and found a black bone between two ammonite shells - tiny, smaller than a little finger. Presumably, it belongs to an Early Cretaceous pterosaur. This is one of the few finds of flying dinosaurs in the Volga region. For the first time, the remains of Russian pterosaurs were discovered by geologist V.G. Khimenkov in the chalk sands near the village of Malaya Serdoba, Penza region. They were described by paleontologist N.N. Bogolyubov in 1914. Then, for about a hundred years, the remains of pterosaurs were not found on the territory of European Russia. Only in the nineties and two thousand years the bones of these animals began to be found again. In the sand near the village of Rasstrigin, Volgograd region A.A. Yarkov collected individual bones of ornithocheiridae - flying dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, the size of a large eagle. A fragment of the jaw of an ornithocheirus from the genus Lonchodectes was found near the Melovatka farm in the Volgograd region by members of an expedition of the Paleontological Institute led by E.N. Kurochkina. Previously, the remains of these pterosaurs were known only from the Cretaceous sediments of Britain. It is noteworthy that even there only isolated fragments of bones were preserved from these lizards. Near the village of Shirokiy Karamysh, Saratov region, and in Saratov itself, remains of a new genus of pterosaurs called the “Volga dragon” (Volgadraco bogolubovi) were discovered. Its wingspan was about 5 meters. Most likely, it ate fish, crabs and small lizards, like modern herons and storks. Perhaps he spent more time on the ground than in the air, crawling along sandy beaches all day long. Flying lizards nested on the islands of the grandiose Volga archipelago. Ancient birds also lived here, including giant swimming hesperornis. For the first time in Russia, their bones were found by A.A. Yarkov near the Polunino farm in the Volgograd region. Later, the remains of hesperornis were found in the Saratov region - in an old quarry near the village of Karyakino. Russian Hesperornis (Hesperornis rossicus) was a large, human-sized bird. Their wings were reduced, their paws were adapted for swimming. In their lifestyle, they apparently resembled cormorants. They may have made seasonal migrations and nested in large colonies on beaches. Hesperornis fished in the sea and, in turn, became prey for large predators. In the seas they were hunted by sharks, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, and on land by dinosaurs. But while the Volga marine predators have been studied quite well, dinosaurs for the most part remain a “blank spot” in Russian paleontology. They searched for dinosaurs in Russia for a long time. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, scientists occasionally came across poorly preserved fragments of bones, which were usually mistaken for dinosaur ones: pieces of ribs were found in the gravel of the Kursk road, a fragment of bone was brought from Transbaikalia, and an unusual vertebra was brought from the Vologda region. All this was described as the remains of dinosaurs, and later it turned out that they belonged to crocodiles, Permian lizards and amphibians. Perhaps the first Russian dinosaur was found in the Saratov region. In August 1904, first local newspapers, and then the capital’s Government Gazette, reported on the discovery of large bones in the province: “The other day, in a ravine not far from the village. Robbery, in the gray Jurassic clay the bones of one of the largest reptiles were found. The present find represents several massive vertebrae with long processes, a scapula, femur, ribs and a jaw with teeth characteristic of terrestrial herbivorous animals. Judging by the data, we can think that it was an iguanodon. Unfortunately, the find lacks other skull bones. Complete skeletons of fossil animals are generally very rare, and this find is one of the complete ones; it was made by A.A. Polyakov, sent here by the Kyiv Society of Naturalists for geological research, and will be sent to its destination.” 48 Hesperornis (Hesperornis rossicus) Volga archipelago of the late Cretaceous period: a predatory dinosaur and azhdarchid pterosaur Titanosauridae (Titanosauridae) Iguanodons have very peculiar teeth, similar to small nettle leaves. Marine reptiles did not have such teeth. However, it is difficult to say who exactly the skeleton belonged to. They did not have time to describe and study it, and where it is stored now is unknown. We had to wait more than a hundred years for the next meeting with Volga dinosaurs. In the nineties A.A. Yarkov collected fossils on the shore of the Bereslavsky reservoir, near the village of Novy Rogachik, where every year waves wash away the steep bank, fossils fall into the water, and the waves clear them of sand and clay. Finding fossils here is a pleasure. Usually on the beach there are crab shells, various shells, sponge glasses, mosasaurus bones and shark teeth. The remains of fauna from different geological eras are randomly dumped along the surf strip. One April day, Yarkov came across a small bone. These have never been seen here before. “Once again I look carefully. The main thing is not to make a mistake and not to wishful thinking! The articular surface is clearly characteristic of the fingers of terrestrial reptiles. The corresponding curve and pits on the sides - well, finally, we can shake paws, old dinosaur! “- this is how Yarkov wrote about this find in the book “Revived Dragons”. St. Petersburg paleontologist L.A. became interested in the find. Nesov. Together with Yarkov, they wandered for a long time along the Bereslavsky reservoir along the scatterings of stones and collected several more bones and teeth of dinosaurs, mainly dromaeosaurids (Dromaeosauridae). They were small, bipedal predators with feathered bodies. They had a sickle-shaped claw on the second toe of their hind paw. Dromaeosaurs were probably warm-blooded animals that lived in packs. As they grew older, their diet could change significantly - small young individuals fed on insects and carrion, while adults hunted other dinosaurs, hesperornis, and ravaged sea turtle nests. Also in Novy Rohachik the remains of primitive carnivorous dinosaurs close to megalosaurs were discovered. According to St. Petersburg paleontologist A.O. Averyanov, these lizards came to us from the east, when the Cretaceous Sea became shallow and the European continent connected through the Turgai Isthmus with the territory of present-day Central Asia. Dinosaur bones were also found in the Ulyanovsk region. In these parts, traces of ancient land have been found before - mainly the remains of petrified wood. So, soon after the revolution, geologist A.N. Rozanov looked into a small slate quarry near Undor and saw a large, two-meter, fossilized log lying under the sky - a Jurassic tree fern with diamond-shaped “scales” along the entire trunk. At the request of the geologist, the find was presented to the Geological Committee. Rozanov suggested that the trunk was dragged either from the eastern shore of the sea, which passed at the mouth of the present Kama, or from the western shore, located near Penza. Further research showed that terrestrial flora and fauna fell into marine sediments, most likely from the islands that made up the huge chain of the Volga archipelago. Not far from the site of this find, in the vicinity of the former Zakharyevsky mine V.M. Efimov once noticed a huge vertebra the size of a bucket and weighing about 30 kilograms. The bone is very unusual. V.G. Ochev believed that this could be the vertebra of a giant crocodile. Foreign paleontologists are inclined to think that the bone probably belonged to another giant from the world of dinosaurs - a long-necked sauropod from the titanosauridae family, which lived at the very beginning of the Cretaceous period. The corpse of the lizard could have been brought to the burial site of the vertebra by sea currents in the same way as the trunk of a fern. The titanosaur may have drowned while swimming from island to island. Surely, sooner or later, bones of other dinosaurs and no less amazing sea lizards will be found in the Volga region. The subsoil of the Volga region holds many mysteries. In the Ulyanovsk region, a fragment of the humerus of a Jurassic plesiosaur was once dug up - several times larger than usual. In the Upper Jurassic deposits of the Orenburg region, on the slope of the Khan’s Tomb mountain, a piece of a hefty “thigh” of a plesiosaur was found. The length of these two lizards could be close to 15-17 meters. In this case, they reached the size of whales and were one of the largest predators in the entire history of the Earth. Every few years, new species of inhabitants of the Mesozoic Sea are discovered in the Volga region. Last year, a seven-meter long-necked plesiosaur, the Abyssosaurus natalie, was described from the Lower Cretaceous deposits of Chuvashia. It received its name - “bottomless lizard” - due to its structural features, suggesting that the lizard led a deep-sea lifestyle. Also in 2011, the first Russian Cretaceous ichthyosaur from the genus Sveltonectes insolitus, previously found in the Ulyanovsk region, was thoroughly studied. It was a small, two-meter lizard that fed on small fish and soft-bodied cephalopods. All these traces of the past allow us to better understand the world of the long-vanished Russian Sea. For now, our knowledge is too modest compared to what remains to be learned. 54 54 Like any other science, paleontology is constantly updated with new information and enriched with new discoveries. Every year the picture of the past becomes more complete, although it is unlikely that it will ever be completed. This is an endless picture, painted by the same endless Nature... Popular science publication ARKHANGELSKY Maxim Savvich IVANOV Alexey Viktorovich NELIKHOV Anton Evgenievich WHEN THE VOLGA WAS A SEA Editor Z.I. Shevchenko Computer layout Yu.L. Zhupilova Signed for publication 02/06/12 Format 70×100 1/16 Paper. offset. Conditional oven l. 4.18 (4.5) Academic ed. l. 4.0 Circulation 500 copies. Order. Saratov State Technical University 410054, Saratov, Polytechnicheskaya st., 77 Tel. 24-95-70, 99-87-39. Email: [email protected] Printed at the “New Wind” printing house, st. Astrakhanskaya, 79. Tel. 51-33-85

I accidentally came across a book online

Published by Yu.A. Gagarin Saratov State Technical University. circulation of 500 copies. Beautifully designed thanks to drawings, some of which I copied into the post.
It tells about the discovery by enthusiastic paleontologists of ancient marine and terrestrial animals that lived on land and in the sea, which once covered almost the entire Volga basin - that is why, apparently, this name was given to the book.
Drawing with the boundaries of the sea established by fossils

After reading this small work, it seems to me, everyone can feel the power of disasters that methodically, one after another, rolled up layers of each time, again and again, an established life: finds were discovered not only in river and local cliffs, but also regularly in mines, at depths of 50, 100, 200 and more meters!!
Behind this methodical nature one can easily guess the frequency of disasters, which is what this magazine does. The transfer of huge masses of different breeds is associated with the water element, which always serves as transport for transfer. All transportation is provided by the GlavMorZemAdministration "Periodic Pole Shift".

So, some lines from this book:

Director of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Yuri Aleksandrovich Orlov, recalled how during an expedition he went to a shale mine and talked with the workers. He told them for a long time about the enormous value of ancient bones. “Finds like yours serve as decoration for museums,” he said confidentially. The chief engineer of the mine responded that “only idiots go to museums”... “We saw a lot of things in the mines. At first everything was a wonder. Then they got used to it and didn’t pay attention. For what? You have to earn money. You load the slate and see a shell or fish on the ceiling. If you hit it with a shovel, it will fall off. Where should I put it? If you look, you’ll throw it under your feet,” say former miners. Only occasionally they would take a “shell” or “fish” to the surface for the children to play with.
...
In 1926, an event happened that turned his leisurely life upside down. On the Bolshaya Chagra River near the village of Kordon, peasant women found the skull of a Trogonteria elephant. Zhuravlev was told about this by his friend, agent
Khvorostyansky criminal investigation department. According to him, the “head with horns” weighed as much as 12 pounds.
Zhuravlev immediately went to the place of discovery. It turned out that in the spring the river bank collapsed greatly. When they were making a new access to the water, the peasant woman noticed either a stick or a stake sticking out of the clay and hit it with a shovel. The stick cracked and a white soft substance appeared inside - apparently clay. Women began to collect it to make white for their faces. Soon the men found out about this and decided to dig up the bones. The skull and tusks were very large - they were pulled out of the ground using ropes and shafts, and then taken to the volost police station.
Zhuravlev wanted to check if there were any other bones in the cliff, went to the police, explained the situation and asked the prisoners for the excavation. The prisoners dug a 15 square meter hole for him right down to the water,
but nothing else was found.
The local historian loaded the skull onto a cart and brought it home to Pugachev at night.

Finally, Zhuravlev found two clusters of ichthyosaur bones. From one he assembled a two-meter skeleton and exhibited it in the Pugachev Museum. It is still stored there to this day.
...
Geologists were lowered into the mine, to a depth of three hundred meters , to the location of the skeleton. There really were a lot of bones. They were removed according to all the rules - with thin excavation knives, removing dirt with brushes.
The miners looked at the scientists in surprise. “We thought these were washers, but for some reason there were no holes for the bolts. We punched them with a pick and a chisel - there are no holes, and that’s it,” they said.
The skeleton belonged to Zhuravlev's eye. Now it is exhibited in the Saratov Regional Museum of Local History: 44 vertebrae, an incomplete forelimb and a femur - a total of 78 bones...

The first reptile bones were found here in 1936. They were found by miner Bochkarev, who was breaking off pieces of shale at a depth of 148 meters.
...
The largest burial place of “fish lizards” is located near Ulyanovsk, in the vicinity of the village of Undory. This is one of the world's richest sites of Jurassic sea lizards. There are so many bones here that Professor V.G. Ochev dreamed of erecting a monument to an ichthyosaur in Undory.
...
At the beginning of March 1933, Zhuravlev was very lucky; he made his best find - the skeleton of a pliosaur, approximately half preserved. The left flippers, the middle part of the skull, several
calls and ribs. The bones lay in hard rock. Without any experience, Zhuravlev managed to prepare and independently assemble a six-meter skeleton of a lizard. Thus, in the provincial town of Pugachev, the only skeleton of a pliosaur in the country appeared.
...
Complete skeletons of Cretaceous plesiosaurs have not yet been discovered in Russia, but many scattered remains have been found, especially in the phosphorite horizons of the Lower Volga region, which are replete with bones of elasmosaurids and polycotylides. Sometimes from one square meter you can collect six large, fist-sized, lizard vertebrae.
There are also more valuable finds. Thus, near the village of Kologrivovka in the Lysogorsky district of the Saratov region, an incomplete vertebral column of an elasmosaurus was found. Now it is kept in the Natural History Museum of SSTU.
...
At the beginning of the 20th century, a complete skeleton of this lizard was apparently dug up in the Saratov province. But it was not scientists who found it, but peasants. They broke out the blocks with bones and decided to sell them to a glue factory. Such factories
smoked in many peasant areas. They used the remains of cows, horses and goats to make glue, soap and bone meal to fertilize the fields.
They also did not disdain fossil remains. In the Ryazan province, a bone factory once bought four skeletons of big-horned deer for processing.
...
But only the Saratov men thought of using the completely petrified remains of the lizard for soap. The factory would probably have rejected such a curiosity. However, the skeleton was not taken there. The bones of a mosasaurus were lying in a barn that unexpectedly burned down. Only a few vertebrae remained from the lizard, which eventually fell into the hands of scientists.
Soon, another mosasaurus was found in the Volga region (a shark face, only worse). Fate treated him more kindly.
...
Soon the whole of Penza was gossiping about the lizard. Rumors circulated one more absurdly than the other, no one understood anything. Someone claimed that they had found the grave of a mammoth and the bones of an ancient man. Someone said that they were digging either sea-
a European frog, or an antediluvian hippopotamus. In one church, a priest preached a sermon that the bones belonged to an ancient beast that did not fit into Noah’s ark.
...
For the first time, the remains of Russian pterosaurs were discovered by geologist V.G. Khimenkov in the chalk sands near the village of Malaya Serdoba, Penza region. They were described by paleontologist N.N. Bogolyubov in 1914.
...
In the sand near the village of Rasstrigin, Volgograd region A.A. Yarkov collected individual bones of ornithocheiridae - flying dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, the size of a large eagle.
A fragment of the jaw of an ornithocheirus from the genus Lonchodectes was found near the Melovatka farm in the Volgograd region by members of an expedition of the Paleontological Institute led by E.N. Kurochkina.
...
Not far from the site of this find, in the vicinity of the former Zakharyevsky mine V.M. Efimov once noticed a huge vertebra the size of a bucket and weighing about 30 kilograms. The bone is very unusual. V.G. Ochev believed that this could be the vertebra of a giant crocodile.

Dinosaurs lived on the territory of what is now the Saratov region. This is precisely the conclusion that, after years of archaeological and research work, scientists from one of the regional universities came to. A SmartNews correspondent talked with specialists who conduct unique paleontological research.

Lizards, dragons and flying dinosaurs not so long ago, about 65 million years ago, inhabited the modern Saratov region. For a person, such a time period seems like an eternity, but for the history of the Earth it is just another milestone. At least this is what paleontologists Maxim Arkhangelsky and Alexey Ivanov think. It was these Saratov researchers, in collaboration with journalist Anton Nelikhov, who published a book about a year ago with the romantic title “When the Volga was a sea.”

Maxim Arkhangelsky, associate professor of SSTU named after. Yu. A. Gagarina, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences:

- The book “When the Volga Was a Sea” is dedicated to the memory of the paleontologist Vitaly Georgievich Ochev; his books “Secrets of the Burning Hills” and “The Dinosaurs Have Not Came Yet” inspired more than one generation of paleontologists with the passion of the researcher.

Scientists suggest that the modern Volga region was all water several tens of millions of years ago. During the Mesozoic, where the current high-rise buildings, shopping and entertainment centers of Penza, Ulyanovsk, Volgograd, Saransk and Saratov stand, there was nothing but water. The salty waves of the wide Russian Sea were broken only by a series of small archipelagos, where proto-birds nested and the distant ancestors of reptiles basked in the rays of an almost ahistorical sun.

Alexey Ivanov, professor, dean of the Faculty of Ecology and Service of SSTU:

- The territory of the modern Volga region during the Cretaceous period was a huge sea with islands of the so-called Volga archipelago, which were covered with forests and inhabited by dinosaurs.

Small in format, but deep in content, the book takes the reader not tens, but millions of years ago. Its pages tell about the Mesozoic era of the Earth. About that distant time when the Russian Sea was on the territory of the modern Volga region. According to domestic paleontologists, it was inhabited not only by sea lizards and sharks, but also by giant turtles, strange birds, as well as dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Their fossilized remains, teeth, bones and prints have been found near Saratov for many years.

Sergey Merkulov, paleontologist-enthusiast:

- Mostly there are scattered fragments. The finds are very serious both on the scale of Russia and in paleontology in general. Teeth, joints, vertebrae are found, whole skeletons are not. Of course, I would like to find a pterosaur skull or a whole skeleton. If we find a whole skull, it will be a sensation.

The discoveries of Saratov scientists and their stories about the time of dinosaurs do not leave the public indifferent. The facts speak about the interest of Saratov residents in the ancient topic, and, as you know, you can’t argue with them. For example, a small circulation of only 500 copies of the book sold out almost instantly. And the electronic version of the publication, posted on the Internet, was downloaded more than a thousand times in the first month alone. It is noteworthy that in search engines, after typing the first words of the title, the choice of book is automatically offered to the user.

I accidentally came across a book online

Published by Yu.A. Gagarin Saratov State Technical University. circulation of 500 copies. Beautifully designed thanks to drawings, some of which I copied into the post.

It tells about the discovery by enthusiastic paleontologists of ancient marine and terrestrial animals that lived on land and in the sea, which once covered almost the entire Volga basin - that is why, apparently, this name was given to the book.

Drawing with the boundaries of the sea established by fossils

After reading this small work, it seems to me, everyone can feel the power of disasters that methodically, one after another, rolled up layers of each time, again and again, an established life: finds were discovered not only in river and local cliffs, but also regularly in mines, at depths of 50, 100, 200 and more meters!!

Behind this methodical nature one can easily guess the frequency of disasters, which is what this magazine does. The transfer of huge masses of different breeds is associated with the water element, which always serves as transport for transfer. All transportation is provided by the GlavMorZemAdministration "Periodic Pole Shift".

So, some lines from this book:

Director of the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Yuri Aleksandrovich Orlov, recalled how during an expedition he went to a shale mine and talked with the workers. He told them for a long time about the enormous value of ancient bones. “Finds like yours serve as decoration for museums,” he said confidentially. The chief engineer of the mine responded that “only idiots go to museums”... “We saw a lot of things in the mines. At first everything was a wonder. Then they got used to it and didn’t pay attention. For what? You have to earn money. You load the slate and see a shell or fish on the ceiling. If you hit it with a shovel, it will fall off. Where should I put it? If you look, you’ll throw it under your feet,” say former miners. Only occasionally they would take a “shell” or “fish” to the surface for the children to play with.

In 1926, an event happened that turned his leisurely life upside down. On the Bolshaya Chagra River near the village of Kordon, peasant women found the skull of a Trogonteria elephant. Zhuravlev was told about this by his friend, agent

Khvorostyansky criminal investigation department. According to him, the “head with horns” weighed as much as 12 pounds.

Zhuravlev immediately went to the place of discovery. It turned out that in the spring the river bank collapsed greatly. When they were making a new access to the water, the peasant woman noticed either a stick or a stake sticking out of the clay and hit it with a shovel. The stick cracked and a white soft substance appeared inside - apparently clay. Women began to collect it to make white for their faces. Soon the men found out about this and decided to dig up the bones. The skull and tusks were very large - they were pulled out of the ground using ropes and shafts, and then taken to the volost police station.

Zhuravlev wanted to check if there were any other bones in the cliff, went to the police, explained the situation and asked the prisoners for the excavation. The prisoners dug a 15 square meter hole for him right down to the water,

but nothing else was found.

The local historian loaded the skull onto a cart and brought it home to Pugachev at night.

Finally, Zhuravlev found two clusters of ichthyosaur bones. From one he assembled a two-meter skeleton and exhibited it in the Pugachev Museum. It is still stored there to this day.

Geologists were lowered into the mine, to a depth of three hundred meters, to the location of the skeleton. There really were a lot of bones. They were removed according to all the rules - with thin excavation knives, removing dirt with brushes.

The miners looked at the scientists in surprise. “We thought these were washers, but for some reason there were no holes for the bolts. We punched them with a pick and a chisel - there are no holes, and that’s it,” they said.

The skeleton belonged to Zhuravlev's eye. Now it is exhibited in the Saratov Regional Museum of Local History: 44 vertebrae, an incomplete forelimb and a femur - 78 in total...

Bones...

The first reptile bones were found here in 1936. They were found by miner Bochkarev, who was breaking off pieces of shale at a depth of 148 meters.

The largest burial place of “fish lizards” is located near Ulyanovsk, in the vicinity of the village of Undory. This is one of the world's richest sites of Jurassic sea lizards. There are so many bones here that Professor V.G. Ochev dreamed of erecting a monument to an ichthyosaur in Undory.

At the beginning of March 1933, Zhuravlev was very lucky; he made his best find - the skeleton of a pliosaur, approximately half preserved. The left flippers, the middle part of the skull, several

calls and ribs. The bones lay in hard rock. Without any experience, Zhuravlev managed to prepare and independently assemble a six-meter skeleton of a lizard. Thus, in the provincial town of Pugachev, the only skeleton of a pliosaur in the country appeared.

Complete skeletons of Cretaceous plesiosaurs have not yet been discovered in Russia, but many scattered remains have been found, especially in the phosphorite horizons of the Lower Volga region, which are replete with bones of elasmosaurids and polycotylides. Sometimes from one square meter you can collect six large, fist-sized, lizard vertebrae.

There are also more valuable finds. Thus, near the village of Kologrivovka in the Lysogorsky district of the Saratov region, an incomplete vertebral column of an elasmosaurus was found. Now it is kept in the Natural History Museum of SSTU.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a complete skeleton of this lizard was apparently dug up in the Saratov province. But it was not scientists who found it, but peasants. They broke out the blocks with bones and decided to sell them to a glue factory. Such factories

smoked in many peasant areas. They used the remains of cows, horses and goats to make glue, soap and bone meal to fertilize the fields.

They also did not disdain fossil remains. In the Ryazan province, a bone factory once bought four skeletons of big-horned deer for processing.

But only the Saratov men thought of using the completely petrified remains of the lizard for soap. The factory would probably have rejected such a curiosity. However, the skeleton was not taken there. The bones of a mosasaurus were lying in a barn that unexpectedly burned down. Only a few vertebrae remained from the lizard, which eventually fell into the hands of scientists.

Soon, another mosasaurus was found in the Volga region (a shark face, only worse). Fate treated him more kindly.

Soon the whole of Penza was gossiping about the lizard. Rumors circulated one more absurdly than the other, no one understood anything. Someone claimed that they had found the grave of a mammoth and the bones of an ancient man. Someone said that they were digging either sea-

a European frog, or an antediluvian hippopotamus. In one church, a priest preached a sermon that the bones belonged to an ancient beast that did not fit into Noah’s ark.

For the first time, the remains of Russian pterosaurs were discovered by geologist V.G. Khimenkov in the chalk sands near the village of Malaya Serdoba, Penza region. They were described by paleontologist N.N. Bogolyubov in 1914.

In the sand near the village of Rasstrigin, Volgograd region A.A. Yarkov collected individual bones of ornithocheiridae - flying dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, the size of a large eagle.

A fragment of the jaw of an ornithocheirus from the genus Lonchodectes was found near the Melovatka farm in the Volgograd region by members of an expedition of the Paleontological Institute led by E.N. Kurochkina.

Not far from the site of this find, in the vicinity of the former Zakharyevsky mine V.M. Efimov once noticed a huge vertebra the size of a bucket and weighing about 30 kilograms. The bone is very unusual. V.G. Ochev believed that this could be the vertebra of a giant crocodile.

Father Frost and Father From the Sea wish everyone a peaceful life.