''Delphinosaurus'' is a dubious genus of
ophthalmosaurid
Ophthalmosauridae is an extinct family of thunnosaur ichthyosaurs from the Middle Jurassic to the early Late Cretaceous (Bajocian - Cenomanian) worldwide. Almost all ichthyosaurs from the Middle Jurassic onwards belong to the family, until the e ...
ichthyosaur
Ichthyosauria is an order of large extinct marine reptiles sometimes referred to as "ichthyosaurs", although the term is also used for wider clades in which the order resides.
Ichthyosaurians thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fo ...
from
Albian
The Albian is both an age (geology), age of the geologic timescale and a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early/Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch/s ...
-
Cenomanian
The Cenomanian is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy's (ICS) geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age (geology), age of the Late Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or the lowest stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Upper Cretace ...
deposits in the
Kursk region of
European Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
.
Merriam (1905) erected ''Delphinosaurus'' for the Late Triassic ichthyosaur ''Shastasaurus perrini'' from California, but because ''Delphinosaurus'' was already in use, the replacement name ''
Californosaurus
''Californosaurus'' ('California lizard') is an extinct genus of ichthyosaur, an extinct marine reptile, from the Lower Hosselkus Limestone (Carnian, Late Triassic) of California, and also the Muschelkalk (Ladinian, Middle Triassic) of Germany.
...
'' was erected.
Classification
Karl Eduard von Eichwald (1853) erected ''Delphinosaurus'' for eight mandible fragments, twelve teeth, one rib, two centra, one humerus and one epipodial from the iron-rich sands of the Kursk area dating to the Albian–Cenomanian boundary. He classified the remains as those of amphibians, because of the presence of dolphin and reptile features, suggesting an intermediate form in between these groups, hence the name. Later, however, he recognized ''Delphinosaurus'' as being an ichthyosaur in an 1865 monograph.
In the supplementary material for their paper explaining the extinction of ichthyosaurs, Fischer et al. (2016) treated ''Delphinosaurus'' as a dubious genus of ophthalmosaurid, raising the possibility that the hypodigm for ''D. kiprijanoffi'' is composite due to some teeth resembling ''
Sisteronia'', and the humerus being morphologically distinct from ''Sisteronia''.
See also
*
List of ichthyosaurs
This list of ichthyosauromorphs is a comprehensive listing of all Genus, genera that have ever been included in the clade Ichthyosauromorpha, excluding purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also genera that ar ...
*
Timeline of ichthyosaur research
This timeline of ichthyosaur research is a chronological listing of events in the History of paleontology, history of paleontology focused on the ichthyosauromorphs, a group of secondarily aquatic marine reptiles whose later members superficially ...
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q60790116
Early Cretaceous ichthyosaurs
Early Cretaceous reptiles of Europe
Fossil taxa described in 1853