cataloging

The collection of fossil remnants of cartilaginous fishes

formed by the prominent soviet paleichthyologist Leonid Glickman

The collection of remnants of the fossil cartilaginous fishes was formed by the famous soviet paleichthyologist Leonid Glickman (1929-2000). It includes tens of thousands of scientific items displaying the development if this group from the Carboniferous period until the present time. The collection mainly consists of fossil teeth of ancient sharks, rays, and Holocephali. It also includes the remnants of Teleostei, teeth and fragments of bones of sea reptiles, as well as other remnants of different invertebrates such as sponges, gastropods, bivalves, brachiopods, and echinoderms. Most of the material includes the Cretaceous (over 1000 items) and Cenozoic (over 500 items from the Paleogene period) groups of the Lamniformes.

Excluding the small Carboniferous collections, the collection presents the materials from the late Jurassic period until modern times almost without any stratigraphic breaks, namely from the late Jurassic period, early Cretaceous (excluding the Berriasian), from all ages of late Cretaceous, the Paleogene, the Neogene and the Quaternary Period (including the Holocene).

In 1982 the collection was donated to the State Darwin Museum by the candidate of biology N.N. Kalandadze, the senior researcher at the Orlov Paleontological Museum, a part of the Paleontological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. This collection has great scientific and cultural value. It is known that it took Glickman about 40 years to collect most items, which he did himself (starting from the late 1940s until the 1980s). The entire collection includes the smaller ones formed by other geologists and paleontologists: V.I. Zhelezko, V.V. Menner, A.C. Stoliarov, V.A. Bronevoy, R.G. Garetskiy, N.E. Melnikova, D.V. Obruchev, and others. There are also materials with old labels gathered by A.S. Rogovich (the 1850s), I.F. Sintsov (the 1870s) and a unique collection of fossil shark teeth found during scientific research in the Pacific and Indian oceans (RV “Vityaz”, “Ob” and “Lomonosov”).

The collection of Leonid Glickman is world-famous and still remains a unique resource of information on ancient sharks for many scientists and researchers. These materials have been available for study since 2014. Many specialists in paleichthyology from various parts of Russia regularly visit the State Darwin Museum to study this collection: E.V. Popov and A.V. Biriukov (Saratov), specialists in cartilaginous fishes of the Cretaceous period, T.P. Malyshkina (Yekaterinburg), specializing in Paleogene sharks of Kazakhstan, F.A. Trikolidi (Saint Petersburg), specializing in ancient sharks of Crimea.

Today, the primary processing and cataloging of samples of the Late Cretaceous period are almost completed. The largest part includes the extensive material from the Saratov region (about 36400 items).