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Paleontologists have actually explained a brand-new types of the extinct turtle genus Craspedochelys based upon an amazing fossil shell and a few of its postcranial bones from Colombia.
Creative restoration of Craspedochelys renzi and the shallow marine community where lived in; the forelimbs with a flippler like shape is based upon the most total thalassochelydian understood up until now, Thalassemys bruntrutanaImage credit: Juan Giraldo.
Craspedochelys renzi lived throughout the Hauterivian age of the Early Cretaceous date, in between 132 and 125 million years earlier.
The ancient types was a kind of thalassochelydian, a group of marine-adapted turtles from the Jurassic and Cretaceous durations.
“Throughout their advancement, numerous unassociated groups of turtles have actually established adjustments to reside in marine and littoral environments,” stated Dr. Edwin-Alberto Cadena, a paleontologist at the Universidad del Rosario, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Field Museum of Natural History, and his associates.
“One of these groups is called Thalassochelydia, formed generally by 3 Jurassic households: Eurysternidae, Plesiochelyidae, and Thalassemydidae, with unsettled and questionable phylogenetic relationships.”
“Of the 3 households that make up the thalassochelydians, ‘Plesiochelyidae’ is among the most varied, consisting of a minimum of 10 types in 4 various genera: Craspedochelys Plesiochelys Portlandemysand Tropidemys“
“Shells of ‘plesiochelyids’ can be differentiated from other thalassochelydians by showing plus sizes (carapace length of 40-55 cm), the lack of carapacial fontanelles in grownups, an osseous bridge, and, at many, a main plastral fontanelle.”
Craspedochelys renzi represented by an articulated shell with some postcranial bones. Image credit: Cadena et aldoi: 10.1186/ s13358-025-00394-1.
The fossil specimen of Craspedochelys renzi was at first found by the Swiss geologist Otto Renz throughout a fieldwork exploration to the Cuña de Cuiza area, Guajira Department of Colombia in the 1950s.
The specimen consisted of a partial shell (25.5 cm in length and 23.1 cm in width), hindlimb bones, and caudal vertebrae.
Consequently, it was housed at the paleontological collections of the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Switzerland, where it stayed forgotten for more than 60 years in the cabinets of fossil invertebrate collections.
“Geological proof connects the specimen to the Moina Formation, a shallow marine deposit from the Hauterivian,” the paleontologists stated.
The fossil represents the youngest record understood up until now for thalassochelydians worldwide, from the Hauterivian, and the 2nd record of the group beyond Europe.
“The discovery of Craspedochelys renzi represents a substantial contribution to the understanding of thalassochelydian, especially of the ‘plesiochelyid’ turtles, extending their geographical variety to northern Gondwana and their temporal variety into the Hauterivian,” the scientists stated.
“This finding highlights the value of reviewing historic collections and highlights the capacity for future discoveries in underexplored areas like northern South America.”
“The existence of Craspedochelys renzi in the Moina Formation even more stresses the complicated paleobiogeographic history of costal and marine turtles throughout the Early Cretaceous.”
“It likewise provides brand-new insights into the evolutionary characteristics of Thalassochelydia and the still-controversial and unsteady phylogenetic relationships within the group, problems that call for even more, extensive examination in future research studies.”
The discovery of Craspedochelys renzi is reported in a paper in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology
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EA. Cadena et al2025. The very first incident of ‘Plesiochelyidae’ marine turtles in the Early Cretaceous of South America. Swiss J Palaeontol 144, 52; doi: 10.1186/ s13358-025-00394-1
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