Palvennia

Palvennia is an extinct genus of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurian known from the uppermost Jurassic of Central Spitsbergen, Norway. It was named for PalVenn, the Friends of the Palaeontological Museum in Oslo, whose expedition led to the discovery of the type specimen. Palvennia was a medium-sized ichthyosaur, measuring long. It was originally known from a single skull from the Slottsmøya Member of the Agardhfjellet Formation that measures long. It is unusual in having a very short rostrum, similar to Ichthyosaurus breviceps. Because of this, the orbit seems very large, but this may be affected by crushing. The single and only known species is Palvennia hoybergeti Druckenmiller et al., 2012. A second specimen, which included both cranial and anterior postcranial material, was described in 2018. In 2019, Palvennia was synonymized with Arthropterygius, though maintained as a separate species, by Nikolay Zverkov and Natalya Prilepskaya, although this synonymy was objected to later that same year by Lene Delsett and colleagues, who maintained that they were sufficiently different to warrant separate genera.