Odontochelys semitestacea
- New Turtle: Odontochelys semitestacea
- Name Means: Half-shelled Toothed Turtle
- Relations: Basal Turtle
- Holotype: IVPP V 15639, complete skeleton
- Other Material: IVPP V13240 (paratype): complete skeleton prepared in ventral (bottom) view, IVPP V 15653: partial skeleton.
- Location: Guizhou Province, southwestern China
- Age: Carnian Triassic, ~220,000,000 years ago
- Length: ~40cm (~16 inches) long.
- Reference: Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang, and Li-Jun Zhao, 2008. An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China Nature 456: 497-501 DOI: 10.1038/nature07533 [Figures and Tables] [Supplemental Info]
- Elsewhere on the Web:
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Reptiles, Triassic.
This is just…too freaking cool. Bill Parker sent me the paper. I have goosebumps over here!
Odontochelys also got some coverage on Bill Parker’s and Will Baird’s respective blogs:
http://chinleana.blogspot.com/2008/11/rethinking-turtle-origins-odontochelys.html
http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/odontochelys-semitestacea-oldest-turtle.html
Thanks Nick -
I’ve added the links to the list above, and included your latest post on the subject. Nice work, and thanks for compiling the list of the latest early turtle papers–there’s some good ones there I hadn’t previously heard about.