A note on finds of Mosasauria in the Pechora region and on the eastern slope of the Urals

Abstract

In 1931 and 1935, I managed to get acquainted with the remains of Mosasauria from two different areas where they had not yet been observed and where their finding, in addition to paleontological, is of great stratigraphic interest. One find in the Pechora region was made by Prof. A. A. Chernov in 1930 in the light gray sandstones of the Lemva River, the left tributary of the Usa River, which flows into the Pechora from the right. An exact determination of the genus and species is not yet possible. It should only be noted that the highly elongated cylindrical shape of the vertebral body is similar to the shape of the caudal vertebrae of North American Mosasauria. The paleontological interest of the find is undoubted: it promises to provide new, more complete remains of the skeleton of Mosasauria, and stratigraphically reliably determines the Upper Cretaceous age of marine sediments on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals.