The type species of
Platypterygius was described in 1922 based on remains found in upper
Aptian strata around
Hannover,
Germany that were previously described as a species of
Ichthyosaurus (
I. platydactylus) in 1907 by
Ferdinand Broili. These remains however were not adequately described and to complicate matters further, destroyed during
World War 2. In the time after its discovery however
Platypterygius has become a catch-all genus for Cretaceous ichthyosaurs, creating the misconstrued view of post-Jurassic ichthyosaurs as being a single global genus lacking in diversity. Later research conducted in the 2000s and 2010s has repeatedly shown this to be false, with all of the autapomorphies previously used to define
Platypterygius either not being present in all assigned species or also being present in other ophthalmosaurids. As the holotype was destroyed, a redescription of the material attempting to identify valid autapomorphies is out of the question and leaves the genus in a problematic state. Furthermore, the inclusion of later described genera of Cretaceous,
platypterygiine ichthyosaurs has shown
Platypterygius to be paraphyletic, with the different species not clading closely to one another. Subsequently, many redescriptions of referred
Platypterygius species have found them to be their own distinct genera. One notable attempt at revising
Platypterygius was conducted by Arkhangel'sky in 1998, who split the genus into three new subgenera.
Longirostria (including the Australian
"P." longmani, a synonym of
"P." australis, and the Argentinian
"P." hauthali),
Tenuirostria (
"P." americanus) and
Pervushovisaurus (which included the newly described
"P." bannovkensis). Both
Platypterygius platydactylus,
"P." kiprianoffi and
"P." hercynicus were placed in the subgenus
Platypterygius.
"Platypterygius" bannovkensis was eventually elevated to its own genus
Pervushovisaurus in 2014, utilizing Arkhangel'sky's proposed subgenus name and
"P." campylodon was also assigned to this genus by a study published in 2016.
"P." kiprianoffi was also assigned to
P. campylodon (now
Pervushovisaurus).
Simbirskiasaurus was originally described in 1985 and later sunk into
Platypterygius before being declared distinct in the same paper as
Pervushovisaurus. and in 2021
"Platypterygius" sachicarum was described by Cortés
et al. as
Kyhytysuka sachicarum. It is argued that the inclusion of oldest species
"P." hauthali requires reinvestigation, Because of this, recent analyses on ichthyosaur classification neglect this species.
Accepted species vertebral column assigned to an immature
P. cf.
longmani (a synonym of
P. australis) •
Platypterygius platydactylus •
Platypterygius americanus (=
Tenuirostria) •
Platypterygius australis (=
Longirostria) •
Platypterygius hercynicus Formerly assigned species •
Pervushovisaurus bannovkensis •
Pervushovisaurus campylodon •
Simbirskiasaurus birjukovi •
Plutoniosaurus bedengensis •
Maiaspondylus cantabrigiensis (
senior synonym of
Platypterygius ochevi ) •
Kyhytysuka sachicarum (formerly
Platypterygius sachicarum ) •
Myobradypterygius hauthali == Classification ==