Platypterygius
Name:
Platypterygius
(Flat wing).
Phonetic: Plat-ee-teh-ree-gee-us.
Named By: von Huene - 1922.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia,
Ichthyosauria, Ophthalmosauridae.
Species: P. platydactylus (type),
P. americani, P. bannovkensis, P. bedengensis, P.
birjukovski, P. kiprijanoffi, P. longmani, P. ochevi,
P. sachicarum.
Diet: Piscivore.
Size: Around 7 meters long.
Known locations: Australia, Russia, USA and
Columbia. Further material possibly from New Zealand and Western
Europe as well.
Time period: Albian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Many specimens including
adults, juveniles.
Platypterygius
was a medium sized ichthyosaur
that lived towards the end of the reign
of this group of marine reptiles. The name which means ‘flat wing’
seems to have been in reference to the arrangement of the bones inside
the front flippers which were tightly bound to produce the flat form.
This feature may have been to reduce water resistance experienced
by Platypterygius while swimming. As a group
the later
ichthyosaurs developed ever more streamlined and powerful swimming
bodies in the face of increasing competition from other oceanic
predators such as marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs,
sharks
and
bony fish.
The
wealth of fossil material associated with Platypterygius
has helped
prove the theory that ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young at sea.
This comes from the remains of pregnant females as well as new born
pups that were born tail first so that pup did not drown while it was
being passed out of its mother’s body. This has always been thought
plausible for the ichthyosaurs because their body form would make it
seemingly impossible to lay eggs on land, and live birth may have
been developed by other groups of marine reptiles such as the
plesiosaurs and pliosaurs.
Fossils
of Platypterygius are known from almost every major
continent on the
planet, and with further material that possibly extends the
geographic range of the genus even further it seems that Platypterygius
may have had what is called a cosmopolitan distribution. Despite this
Platypterygius is often associated with Australia
because of the large
number of remains for this genus which have been recovered from there.
It might seem strange that a marine reptile like Platypterygius
would
be found in inland regions of this continent but back in the Cretaceous
period Platypterygius could have gained access to
these parts via the
Eromanga Sea, a shallow Cretaceous sea that once submerged much of
inland Australia. This sea resulted in the Australia of the
Cretaceous looking more like a group of islands rather than a single
continental landmass.
Further reading
- A new genus of ichthyosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of the Ulyanovsk
Volga region. - Paleontological Journal 4:77-82 - V. M. Efimov - 1997.
- Platypterygius sachicarum (Reptilia,
Ichthyosauria) nueva especie del
Cretácico de Colombia - Revista Ingeominas 6, 1997: 1–12 - M. E. Páramo
- 1997.
- On ichthyosaur remains from the Cretaceous of the Voronezh region -
Paleontological Journal, v. 42, n. 3, p. 287-291. - M. S.
Arkhangel’sky, A. O. Averianov, E. M. Pervushov, Ratnikov, V. Yu
& N. Yu. Zozyrev - 2008.
- An ichthyosaurian forefin from the Lower Cretaceous Zapata Formation
of southern Chile: implications for morphological variability within
Platypterygius. - Palaeoclimate, Palaeobiology, Paleoenvironments. 92
(2): 287–294. - Judith Pardo-Pérez, Eberhard Frey, Wolfgang
Stinnesbeck, Marta S. Fernandez, Luis Rivas, Christian Salazar
& Marcelo Leppe - 2012.
- Taxonomy of Platypterygius campylodon and the
diversity of the last
ichthyosaurs. - PeerJ. 4: e2604. - V. Fischer - 2016.
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