Visualization of the new discovered giant turtle Peltocephalus maturin. Credit: Júlia d‘Oliveira
Phys.org has a story about a new described giant turtle from the Brazilian Amazon. The new species, Peltocephalus maturin, lived during the late Pleistocene, between 40,000 an 9,000 years ago. It was described by Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The name P. maturin comes from Maturin," a fictional character created by best-selling author Stephen King. The turtle was described in a paper published in the journal Biology Letters.
With a maximum shell length of 140 centimeters, the Asian narrow-headed softshell turtle (Chitra chitra) together with the approximately 110-centimeter-long South American river turtle (Podocnemis expansa) is one of the largest freshwater turtles alive today.
"In the past, we only know of a few turtles living in fresh waters that had a shell length of more than 150 centimeters," explains Dr. Ferreira. "Such large animals are most recently known primarily from the Miocene, the period around 23 to 5 million years ago."
