NEW fossils of the largest non-marine turtle to have ever lived have been discovered in the Tatacoa desert in Colombia. These include the biggest complete turtle shell ever found, a 2.4-metre-long carapace that is more than twice the size of the largest living turtle, the leatherback sea turtle.
This shell of Stupendemys geographicus is pictured here next to Rodolfo Sánchez at the Urumaco Paleontology Museum in Venezuela. Sánchez and his colleagues studied the newly found fossils alongside several other specimens discovered in 1994. Although S. geographicus was first described in 1976, little was known about the turtle due to a lack of complete specimens.
Advertisement
Analysis of the fossils suggests the turtles lived during the late Miocene, around 12 to 5 million years ago, in warm wetlands and lakes that researchers believe created just the right habitat and food supply for the huge animal to survive.
It may have evolved to be so big to help protect it from other large species, such as giant crocodilians, with which it shared a habitat. Some male shells had horn-like structures that may have been used in combat against other males (Science Advances, ).
