Tag: turtles
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Scientists Unearth a Prehistoric Marine Turtle the Size of a Car
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about a new fossil turtle. The animal, Leviathanochelys aenigmatica, lived during the Cretaceous Period about 72 million years ago in what is now Spain. It was discovered by a hiker in the Pyrenes mountains. The new species was described in a new paper, which appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.…
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Thick-shelled turtle egg with embryo still inside from the Cretaceous period found in China
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of a turtle embryo in a fossilized egg. The fossil egg was found in China’s Henan Province and dates to the Cretaceous Period. The egg was described in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in…
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PBS Eons: The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about one of the largest turtles that every lived… Archelon. The biggest turtle ever described wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles or any other living sea turtles. But it looks like there are some things about being a giant, skin-shelled sea turtle that just…
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Battle-scarred fossils suggest giant turtles fought each other—and crocodiles three times their size
Science Magazine has a story about the discovery of some giant turtle fossils in Columbia and Venezuela. The turtles, called Stupendemys geographicus, lived about 12 million years ago. Males weighed about 1100 kilograms. These new fossils show they bore unusual large horns off the front of their shells, which they probably used to battle with…
