2" Ichthyosaur (Platypterygius) Tooth - Stary Oskol, Russia

This is a 2" rooted tooth of a Ichthyosaur (Platypterygius) from Stary Oskol, Russia. These teeth are very unusual to see and this is one of a handful of teeth I recently acquired. There are several crack repairs in the tooth and some small gap fills in the root.

Ichthyosaurs ("Fish Lizard") was a giant marine reptile which thrived from much of the Mesozoic era. They evolved in the mid Triassic from a group of unidentified land reptiles which transition back into the water. This line evolved in parallel to the ancestors of todays dolphins and whales, something known as convergent evolution.