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Turtles

© Beverly Eschberger

The first paleontological dig that I worked on was a dinosaur trackways site in Austin, Texas. In addition to the prints of dinosaurs and other extinct animals, we also found the fossilized bones of an extinct turtle. This was very unusual because in general footprints and bones require different conditions for preservation.

Turtles are the only surviving members of a group of animals called the anapsida. In my article "Reptile Skulls", I talked about the different types of skulls seen in reptiles and mammals. The anapsids get their name from the fact that they have no additional openings in their skulls apart from their eye sockets and nostrils.

The turtles are grouped in the Order Chelonia. They differ from other animals in that their bodies, except for the head, tail, and legs, are encased in a shell. Turtles first appear in the fossil record in the late Triassic Period (230 to 195 million years ago), even then they had shells. Paleontologists have wondered for years how the turtles developed their shells, but an intermediate form has yet to be found.

One of the most famous Chelonians was Archelon, a giant turtle (12 feet or 3.7 meters long) that lived during the late Cretaceous Period (140 to 65 million years ago). It probably resembled our modern leatherback turtle, and probably ate a diet of jellyfish, like the leatherback turtle.

Anapsid Skull

Archelon

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