Русская плита

The fouling of skeletons and shells of benthic organisms and the formation of multi-tiered skeletal formations are characteristic of carbonate-producing Porifera, which participated in the structure of reef communities during the Phanerozoic. The accretion of flint sponges, Hexactinellidas, to the solid elements of the substrate is a little-known phenomenon, since many representatives of this group were fixed on the sediment surface by rhizoid outgrowths.

Representatives of the genus Sororistirps, distinguished among the Ventriculites, have been detected in the Santonian – Maastrichtian rocks from the southeast of the Russian Plate. The structures of the skeletons and of the irrigation systems have been considered, the Sororistirps morphogenesis has been traced; the forms characteristic of the Santonian, Campanian and Maastrichtian spongiocomplexes have been determined.

Based on the study of cephalopods and bivalves, the paleontological characteristics of the Ryazanian (lowermost Lower Cretaceous) sections were supplemented in the stratoregion located in the Oka River Basin near Ryazan, Central Russia. The data obtained are important for the analysis of the stratigraphic position in subboreal sections of taxa known in the Arctic, and the subsequent qualitative development of the zonal level of scales for belemnites and buchias of the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary interval of the Russian Plate.

This paper presents a brief biography of the Professor Maxim G. Minich, a Soviet and Russian specialist in fossil fish and stratigraphy of the Permian and Triassic of the Russian Plate and the Cis-Uralian peripheral depression. He was a brilliant representative of the middle generation of the Saratov school of vertebrate researchers, the head of the Department of Biostratigraphy and Paleontology at the Scientific Research Geological Institute of Saratov State University and latterly its Director. He was an honorary member of the All-Russian Paleontological Society.

The Paleogene quartz sandstones of the Sosnovka formation are widely occurred in the Uljanovsk-Syzran Volga region and are used as valuable building materials. The article comprises an improvement for the continental origin of the Sosnovka sandstones based on the results of a comprehensive study of the features of the mineral composition and microstructure of quartz sandstones of the Sosnovka formation obtained by using petrographic, XRD and electron-microscopic analyses.