Fossils of ‘car-sized’ turtle found in South America

One of a largest turtles that ever lived was about a distance of a vehicle — and prowled a lakes and rivers of northern South America from about 13 million years ago to 7 million years ago.

Scientists pronounced on Wednesday they have unearthed new fossils of a turtle, called Stupendemys geographicus, in Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert and Venezuela’s Urumaco segment that for a initial time yield a extensive bargain of a vast reptile, that got adult to four metres long and weighed as most as 1.25 tonnes. 

Stupendemys males, distinct a females, boasted stout front-facing horns on both sides of a carapace — or shell — really tighten to a neck. Deep scars rescued in a fossils indicated that these horns might have been used like a pierce for fighting with other Stupendemys males over friends or territory.

Fighting occurs among certain turtles alive today, quite between masculine tortoises, according to paleontologist Edwin Cadena of a Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, who led a investigate published in a biography Science Advances.

Stupendemys is a second-largest famous turtle, behind seagoing Archelon, that lived roughly 70 million years ago during a finish of a age of dinosaurs and reached about 4.6 metres in length.

The initial Stupendemys fossils were found in a 1970s though many mysteries remained about a animal. The new fossils enclosed a largest-known turtle bombard — 2.86 metres long, even incomparable than Archelon’s bombard — and a initial reduce jaw remains, that gave clues about a diet.

“Stupendemys geographicus was outrageous and heavy. The largest people of this class were about a distance and length of a sedan vehicle if we take into comment a head, neck, bombard and limbs,” Cadena said.

“Its diet was different including tiny animals — fishes, caimans, snakes — as good as mollusks and vegetation, quite fruits and seeds. Putting together all a anatomical facilities of this class indicates that a lifestyle was mostly in a bottom of vast freshwater bodies including lakes and vast rivers,” Cadena added.

Stupendemys — definition “stupendous turtle” — inhabited a gigantic wetlands complement travelling Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Peru before a Amazon and Orinoco rivers were formed.

Its vast distance might have been essential in fortifying opposite challenging predators. It common a sourroundings with hulk crocodilians including a 11-metre-long caiman Purussaurus and a 10-metre-long gavial relations Gryposuchus. One of a Stupendemys fossils was found with a 5 centimetre crocodile tooth embedded in it.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fossil-turtle-stupendemys-1.5461667?cmp=rss