Car-sized turtle fossils unearthed in Spain
Plying the subtropical seas that washed the coasts of the archipelago that made up Europe 83 million years ago was one of the largest turtles on record: a reptile the size of a Mini Cooper.
Researchers on Thursday described remains in northeastern Spain of a turtle named Leviathanochelys aenigmatica that was about 3.7 meters long, weighed a bit under two tons and lived during the Cretaceous period the final chapter in the age of dinosaurs. It is Europe’s biggest-known turtle.
It dwarfed today’s largest turtle the leatherback, which can reach 2m long and is known for marathon marine migrations. Leviathanochelys nearly matched the largest turtle on record — Archelon, which lived roughly 70 million years ago and reached about 4.6m.
“Leviathanochelys was as long as a Mini Cooper while Archelon was the size of a Toyota Corolla,” said paleontologist and study co-author Albert Sellés of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP), a research center affiliated with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
It was good to be the size of a car in the ancient Tethys Sea. Huge marine reptiles with powerful jaws called mosasaurs were the largest predators — some exceeding 15m. Huge sharks, rays and long-necked marine reptiles called plesiosaurs also lurked.
Scientists unearthed the Leviathanochelys remains near the village of Coll de Nargó in Catalonia after fossils protruding from the ground were spotted by a hiker in the Pyrenees mountains. To date, they have found parts of the posterior portion of its carapace, or shell, and most of the pelvic girdle, but no skull, tail or limbs.
The fossils indicated that it possessed a smooth carapace similar to leatherback turtles, with the shell itself about 2.35m and 2.2m wide. —