Very round ancient turtle warmed readily in sun

Will Ferguson, reporter

(Image: Edwin Cadena)

Why be really, really round? It turns out that the precisely circular carapace of a newly discovered species of fossil turtle may have made the ancient creature too wide to be swallowed by predators - and helped it warm up in the sun.

Edwin Cadena at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and colleagues, uncovered the 1.5 metre long fossil buried at the Cerrej?n Coal Mine in north-western Colombia.

Puentemys mushaisaensis is thought to have lived 60 million years ago, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. It is the most recent discovery in a string of super large reptiles found at the mine, including the extinct Titanoboa - at 15 metres, the longest snake known - and Carbonemys, a freshwater turtle the size of a small car.

Puentemys's round shape made it wide, which would have made it a hard snack for predators like Titanoboa to swallow. It may also have warmed the turtle up. "Its circular, low-domed shape would have increased the area of the body exposed to the sun, helping the cold-blooded turtle warm to a temperature at which it was more active," write Cadena's team in the Journal of Paleontology (DOI:10.1666/11-128R1.1).

The new turtle adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that tropical reptiles that walked the Earth shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs were much bigger than their descendants today.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/214847ec/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A70Cancient0Every0Eround0Eturtle0Ewarm0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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