Carettochelyine Turtle from the Neogene of Europe

We identify a fragmentary turtle specimen from the middle Miocene (MN 5) of Hambach, Germany, as the bridge peripheral of a carettochelyine turtle. This important find extends the fossil record of the group to the Neogene of Europe and calls into question the utility of fossil carettochelyids in identifying tropical climate zones.

Fig. 1.

Carettochelyinae (IPB HaH 3028), middle Miocene of Hambach, Germany; (A) dorsal view, (B) side view

Fig. 2.

A simplified cladogram of turtle relationships, based on Gaffney and Meylan (1988), Meylan (1987, 1988), and Wood et al. (1996) illustrating the currently hypothesized character evolution of the loss of marginal scutes and sulci, the gain and loss of peripheral bones, and the presence of a sculptured shell. Gray fields indicate the areas in which the IPB HaH 3028 may be placed using these discrete characters

Fig. 3.

World map illustrating the currently known distribution of carettochelyid turtles from the Cretaceous to Present (updated from and revised after Broin, 1987). New discoveries have extended the known range of fossil carettochelyids to the Eocene of Utah (Eaton et al., 1999), Texas (Westgate, 2001), and Myanmar (Hutchison and Holroyd, 1996) and to the Miocene of Oman (Roger et al., 1994) and Zaire (Hirayama, 1992). The recent distribution of Carettochelys insculpta was updated based on Iverson (1992)

Contributor Notes

(WGJ) Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511; (NK) Institut fÜR PALÄontologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-UniversitÄt Bonn, 53115 Bonn, Germany; and (TM) Department of Palaeozoology, Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet/Swedish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 50007, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden. (WGJ): walter.joyce@yale.edu Send reprint requests to WGJ.

Received: 06 Jul 2003

Accepted: 29 Oct 2003