Russian Plate

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.