A New Dinosaur Fossil from the Southern Urals

A caudal vertebra of a dinosaur (Iguanodontia indet.) is described from Upper Cretaceous (lower Campanian) coastal marine deposits of Izhberda Quarry near Orsk (Orenburg oblast). The vertebra is characterized by a rectangular centrum in the lateral view and transverse processes located at the level of the neurocentral suture. This is the second record of a dinosaur in the region. The previously described dinosaur vertebra from Upper Cretaceous deposits near Orsk (Bogolyubov, 1912) was the first record of a dinosaur from Russia. The caudal vertebra from Izhberda Quarry belonged to a dinosaur about 5 m in length, which may indicate the absence of an island isolation effect in dinosaurs that inhabited the large islands of the Turgai Strait in the Late Cretaceous.