#Eocene turtle shell

[uk-fossils]

RARE: Turtle Exoskeleton Fossil – Barton Beds, Eocene, Whitecliff Bay, Isle of Wight UK

This listing features a rare fossilised turtle exoskeleton fragment, sourced from the Barton Beds at Whitecliff Bay, Isle of Wight, UK. This specimen dates to the Eocene Epoch, making it over 40 million years old and a significant piece of the UK’s palaeontological heritage.

Fossil Type:

Specimen: Turtle Exoskeleton (Shell fragment – likely carapace or plastron)

Represents a chelonian (turtle or tortoise) from the Eocene vertebrate assemblage of southern England

Geological Context:

Period: Paleogene

Epoch: Eocene

Stage: Bartonian (~41.3 to 38 million years ago)

Formation: Barton Group (formerly part of the “Barton Beds”)

Depositional Environment: Coastal lagoon and estuarine settings. The Barton Beds were laid down in a warm, subtropical marine and marginal marine environment rich in vertebrate and invertebrate fossils.

Morphological Features:

Curved or slightly flattened dermal bone typical of chelonian shell fragments

Surface may show granular texture or faint impressions of scute boundaries

Brown-grey fossilisation with natural wear and mineralisation from estuarine clays

Scientific Importance:

Fossil turtle material from the Barton Beds is rare and valuable for understanding Eocene coastal ecosystems in Britain

Specimens like this may be attributable to genera such as Trionyx or other soft-shelled or hard-shelled turtle lineages found in European Eocene sites

These fossils help reconstruct the palaeobiogeography of marine reptiles in the early Cenozoic

Locality Information:

Whitecliff Bay, Isle of Wight, UK – a historically significant fossil site with well-exposed Barton Beds yielding both marine and terrestrial Eocene fossils. A known locality for rare turtle remains, crocodile teeth, and fish fossils

Authenticity & Display:

All of our fossils are 100% Genuine Specimens and are provided with a Certificate of Authenticity. The photographs show the actual fossil for sale. Please see the photo for full sizing – note that the scale rule cube = 1cm.

This is a scientifically intriguing and display-worthy Eocene turtle exoskeleton fossil from one of Britain’s most productive fossil sites. A fine addition to any fossil collection, especially for those interested in ancient reptiles or the palaeontology of the British Isles.

Own a real piece of early Cenozoic history—fossilised remains from over 38 million years ago!

[drhoz]

#2829 - Psephophorus terryprachetti - Pterry's Giant Pturtle

A very large, extinct, leatherback turtle from the Eocene, named after beloved author Terry Pratchett. He was pleased about this, saying that anybody that wasn't delighted about getting a species named after them was clearly a Pod being from the Planet Zog.

The first fossils from the genus were discovered by German Paleontologist Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer in 1846, but all he had were the dermal plates (not that different from the fossil above, really). That's probably why even by 1879, they still weren't clear on what it actually was - British paleotologist Harry Govier Seeley thought they resembled the armour of an armadillo.

The Pturtle was discovered in New Zealand in the 1990s. It would have been 2.5m long, in life.

Sadly, there's only one Dermochelyid turtle left in the world - the Leatherback Dermochelys coriacea, which is critically endangered in some areas. Leatherbacks are unique compared to other modern sea turtles because they lack a bony shell; instead, its carapace is covered by oily flesh and flexible, leathery skin. They're also the deepest-diving and fastest reptiles in the world, swimming down to over 1200m depth, at speeds of up to 35kph. Their constant activity and internal adaptations lets them run at a surprisingly high internal temperature - 18C above the surrounding water.

The biggest threat to leatherback survival is, unfortunately, humanity - hatchlings can be confused by artificial light and head inland instead of towards the water, older turtles are easily caught in fishing nets, and they can confuse plastic bags floating in the water for the jellyfish that form the bulk of their diet.

Otago Museum, Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand.

[aquariuminfobureau]

The large compound island of New Guinea, and adjacent, tropical areas of Australia, are home to a remarkable turtle species, that is an outlier in at least four ways - its lack of close living relatives, its location, and its locomotion. This is the pig nosed or Fly River softshell turtle, also known as the pitted shell turtle, and Carettochelys insculpta. This curious freshwater turtle is now a common zoo exhibit, and occurs in the pet trade especially as cute juveniles, although it's size and cruising habit, make it problematic as a pet turtle. Fortunately care of C. insculpta is very well understood, and not problematic other than their requirement for living space.

C. insculpta is the only living Catettochelys species that is recognized. Very large individuals of this species reportedly have a carapace length of nearly 60 centimeters, or 24 inches. Yet more commonly they are around 25 centimeters, or 14 inches. In New Guinea this species is found only in the southern lowlands of the island, whereas in Australia it is found in Northern Territory. The exact distribution of C. insculpta is uncertain as regards both New Guinea and Australia, but the species is limited to the tropics.

The size of T. insculpta varies by geographical origin, with those from the Kikori area weighing 10 kilograms more than those from the Daly River. In spite of this, no morphological evidence has been presented to justify supposed subspecies distinctions. The great similarity between New Guinea and Northern Territory Carettochelys turtles, and their limited Australian distribution, indicate they dispersed to Australia from New Guinea at some time during the Quarternary.

Carettochelys are found in rivers and streams with soft bottoms and slow currents. Such habitats are rich in leaf litter and wood debris. They are also present in still water bodies in New Guinea. Hatchling Carettochelys can be found in New Guinea river deltas, but as adults they are migrated upstream. Australian populations do not frequent estuaries at all, and are thus more strictly freshwater. These Australian Catettochelys have more habitat available in the wet season, when they are able to move into nearby creeks, and exploit flooded floodplain environments.

Oftentimes people object that Caretrochelys are not true softshells, on the grounds that they are not members of the trionychid clade, that is named for Trionyx, an African softshell turtle. But Catettochelys is their definite sister, and together with the trionychids, they comprise the clade Trionychia. The first trionychians were already softshells, and the morphological status as softshell is inherited by both Carettochelys and its trionychid sisters.

The presence of a northern type turtle, like Catettochelys, in the Australasian realm is a bit of an enigma. Although there are no longer native carettochelyids in the northern hemisphere today, ancestral carettochelyids during the Eocene epoch, appear to have exclusively inhabited northern continents. Therefore ancestral Catettochelys must have reached island Australasia prior to their extinction in Asia. It is not known when carettochelyids arrived in Australasia, and there is currently only one species.

Some other New Guinea turtles, that are members of the trionychid group, are also of Asian affinities. All other Quarternary turtles in New Guinea and Australia, are either pleurodires or meiolaniids. Both these clades are descended from ancestors that were present since the breakup of Gondwana in the Cretaceous and Early Palaeogene. Northern type turtles in Australasia are much more recent arrivals in Australasia, and they are limited to the northern continental mainlands.

Australia has a well deserved reputation for her unique animal life, having evolved in isolation from those of their inhabited continents. However her isolation has not been total, and as she has been carried north towards Asia by forces below the earth's shallow crust, new kinds of animals have arrived on her shores from Asia, including murid rodents, and agamid and varanid lizards.

Although the biota and ecology of Australasia is distinct from that of Asia today, there is overlap between the animal and plant life of these continents, despite the lack of land connections between the continental masses of 'Sundaland' and 'Sahulland'. In fact the climate is an effective barrier, with drier and more season climates in eastern Indonesia, working with the sea to separate the rainforests on the Sunda shelf from those on New Guinea.

Climate zones within Australia largely limit New Guinean faunal and floral components, which include more Asiatic elements than those of Australia, to the north of Australia. The fauna and flora of which, cannot easily be demarcated apart from those of southern New Guinea. Indeed two land bridges across the present Torres Strait, had connected the island continents during the Pleistocene, during which time the sea levels were lower, allowing migration between what are now discontinuous land masses.

Although Catettochelys is unrelated to Holocene sea turtles, it swims with an unusual motion intermediate between the fore and aft rowing of typical, plesiopodal freshwater turtles, such as the red eared slider, and hydropodal sea turtles that swim by employing vertical strokes, or underwater flight. Like the sea turtles, Catettochelys makes more use of its deltoideus muscle in its swimming stroke, creating better forces of lift that facilitate pelagic abilities.

These turtles are quite catholic omnivores, consuming both plant and animal food resources, but their feeding habits become increasingly vegetarian as they mature. They feed extensively on tropical fruits such as Ficus, Sonneratia, and Nypa, that fall into the water where Carettochelys feed, and they also consume a broader diversity of waterside and aquatic plant material, such as the eelgrass Valisneria and algae.

Their aquarium diet should therefore include algae wafers and fresh fruits and vegetables, such as banana, melon, and lettuce. Dried preparations can be fed to these turtles, but it is much preferable to choose those with a rather low protein content. Usually they prefer to eat at the bottom so sinking pellets are a better choice than floating sticks. They will also readily eat defrosted and fresh meaty items. Respecting their omnivory, their diet should be varied and its vegetable component should make up about 2/3 of the diet of adult Carettochelys.

The animal prey that are consumed by Carettochelys are benthic and slow moving, including snails and crayfishes. Therefore these turtles are not suited for sharing an environment with hard shelled potential prey. They are also likely also to consume some aquarium plants. Vertebrates are said only to be eaten as carrion, but opportunistic predation on small, slow or sleeping fish cannot be excluded, because this is normal benthivorous turtle behavior.

Although they are active and efficient midwater swimmers, Carettochelys are foragers and not hunters. Fishes that are significantly larger than their heads will be safe. This species is also peaceable towards other turtles, and is often housed in zoos alongside Australasian pleurodires, of the genera Chelodina, Elseya, and Emydura. Indeed Catettochelys is by now a very popular species in mixed species exhibits, having a good tolerance of other animals, and being much easier to accommodate than are marine turtles.

Im spite of this overall good tolerance, Carettochelys males can actually be aggressive to one another, and in horny condition can harass females with tail biting behavior. Rarely males can be aggressive towards other turtle species, and even fish sharing their environment, but this is a statistical tail end effect, and cannot be considered typical. Usually it is sufficient not to cohabit two males together.

The morphology of the Catettochelys humerus is most similar to that of the trionychids, yet it's shape is convergent upon that of sea turtles. Overall the forelimbs are more efficient hydrofoils than is normal for a freshwater turtle, although they still walk and swim using an alternate coordination of all four limbs, despite being well capable of a graceful, penguin-like underwater flight using the forelimbs alone.

Compared to the trionychid sister clade, Catettochelys possesses elongated autopodia, making the forelimb a functioning underwater 'wing'. This elongation is already described in the extinct, northern hemisphere carettochelyids, but it is thought to be unique among all of the non-marine turtles. The swimming style of Carettochelys gives it an advantage when competing against pleurodire turtles, because it is useful for finding food in low energy environments. The mystery is why no turtles swim like this today, in the tropical rivers of the Congo, Amazonia, or Southeast Asia.

Catettochelys even possesses salt glands, but they are degenerated, like those of the gharial Gavialis, a riverine crocodilian descended from marine ancestors. However it is not resident in brackish environments as an adult, and should be regarded as a truly freshwater turtle. This species visits estuaries only to nest on sandbanks, before returning upstream as they grow. Some Carettochelys juveniles reside in brackish water with salinities up to 21 ppt, or a specific gravity of 1.015.

Often animals and plants that outlive their relatives, in the sense of the geological timescale, have shifted to novel environments. Like the gharial, and the South Asian, Chinese, and Amazon river 'dolphins', of middle Cenozoic origins, Carettochelys appears to represent the phenomenon of atypical, freshwater subclades surviving longer that their marine cousins.

Depending on the location and the time of the year, Carettochelys in the wild may experience an approximate spectrum of pH from 6.5 to 8.5, although the average pH in the river channels is surely 7 to 8. During the wet months, when Catettochelys make use of flooding to access the floodplain, the water pH is lower, despite the strange but widely circulated claim online, that Catettochelys requires hard, alkaline water parameters.

The water temperature in river channel environments is in the middle and upper 20s degrees centigrade. In floodplain habitats the temperature may seasonally reach the upper 30s. If they are maintained at brackish salinities, which is not necessary, the specific gravity should not reach 1.02, and they will still need to drink freshwater, as do marine snakes and birds with functioning salt glands, that still drink rainwater.

[ms-cellanies]

This is absolutely fascinating. This statement in particular caught my attention. Related turtles survived after the extinction of dinosaurs. From the article:

While Solnhofia went extinct at the end of the Jurassic as sea levels fell and the European archipelagos briefly dried out, the family lingered through the extinction of the dinosaurs, evolving bizarre representatives with cue-ball shaped heads in the Eocene Epoch before finally disappearing.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Another sketch brought to you by #paleostream!

Drazinderetes, a giant marine soft shelled turtle from the Eocene of Pakistan. Here a basal sea cow is vibing on it's back. As it should.

[arminreindl]

Meiolaniidae

So honestly I'm relatively new to digital painting. I sketched a little here and there, made skeletals, but actual painting I've done very little. But I ended up putting this together for my work on the Wikipedia page for meiolaniid turtles. (Yes the Ninjemys colours are a reference to it being named after the TMNT)

I've rambled a bit about them before, but basically, meiolaniids are weird stem-turtles thought to be outside the two main modern groups we have. They were decently large animals, their shells alone range from 1 meter to 2 meters in length (3 to 6ft I believe?), they were land animals, had some crazy horns and tails that were encased in spiky armored rings and tipped with a tail club. Here some photos with paleontologist Victoria Arbour, a Ninjemys tail club photographed by Serjoscha Evers and a Meiolania tail club illustrated by W.H. Wesley.

They were found throughout almost the whole Cenozoic, with the oldest form dating to the Eocene of South America and the most recent ones living from the Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and on various South Pacific Islands. They are honestly pretty cool animals and super underrated, which is why I decided to give their wikipedia pages upgrades in the first place. Which also meant doing a bunch of other illustrations (that I was more in tune with) and pulling a bunch of public domain photos and putting them on wikimedia. Here some skeletals and charts I made, open the last pic, it shows multiple different Meiolania species atop each other.

The results were pretty mixed tbh. Some of the most recent forms, Gaffneylania, Warkalania and even Ninjemys had relatively little to write about. But things were more exciting with Niolamia (if you remember my rant about its messed up history). Meiolaniidae itself was just a big summary of all the other stuff, but easily the most extensive was Meiolania itself, which took AGES to research and put togehter. Tho I'm pretty happy with the result. Here's a little side by side, old and new.

[sciencespies]

Why Bats Are One of Evolution’s Greatest Puzzles

https://sciencespies.com/nature/why-bats-are-one-of-evolutions-greatest-puzzles/

Why Bats Are One of Evolution’s Greatest Puzzles

Listen carefully on a quiet summer night and you might hear them. Even if you don’t see a bat’s frantically fluttering form, you might catch its high-pitched chirp as it searches the night for dinner. You’re probably hearing a little brown bat, a common insect-eater found throughout North America, but it is just one of more than a thousand species of bat ranging from the one-inch-long Kitti’s hog-nosed bat to the enormous, three-pound giant golden-crowned flying fox.

Large or small, bats suffer a reputation problem. Aside from being associated with vampires, they’re often called “flying rats” and blamed for the spread of zoonotic diseases into humans (including COVID-19, though whether that blame is founded is as of yet unclear.) This fear often overshadows the fascinating fact that bats are the only mammals to have evolved powered flight, and they’ve been flapping around for tens of millions of years. Where, then, did these flying oddities come from?

Bats pop up in the fossil record around 50 million years ago during a time known as the Eocene. Paleontologists have recovered remains ranging from teeth and bits of jaw to stunning full skeletons in places as far-flung as Wyoming, Paris, Australia and India’s Vastan Mine.

Onychonycteris from Fossil Butte National Monument

(Wiki Commons)

There are some differences between the oldest bats and their modern relatives. Based upon the ear anatomy of the better-preserved specimens, for example, scientists know that the first bats couldn’t echolocate. They relied on sight, smell and touch to find their meals. While modern bats have a claw only on the equivalent of our thumb, earlier bats kept some of the additional finger claws inherited from their ancestors. A fossil bat dating to about 52 million years ago, dubbed Onychonycteris finneryi in 2008, had claws on all five of its fingers. New technology has added a few details to the early bat story, too. A recent study of coloration in the fossil record found that two 48 million-year-old bats found in Germany were mostly brown.

Despite these strides, scientists are left with some big questions. For one thing: The 50-million-year-old bat specimens are already recognizable as bats, so where did they come from? When, where, why and how the first bats become airborne is another mystery buried by Deep Time.

Paleontologists are familiar with such conundrums. For decades, anatomists and zoologists were confounded by the origin of whales. Then, at the end of the 20th century, a wealth of fossil finds provided a detailed outline of how hoofed land mammals became the sea’s largest swimmers. Birds presented a similar problem, with their origin from an unknown reptile ancestor stumping experts until some new ideas about the “terrible lizards” and amazing fossil finds proved that birds are living dinosaurs. Until recently, turtles presented an odd case similar to that of bats; the shelled reptiles seemed to appear out of nowhere in the fossil record. During the past two decades, experts have identified new species of transitional turtles and revised their opinions of already-known species to explain how turtles got their shells.

Spectacled flying fox

(CSIRO)

Each of these puzzling paleontological examples involved a major change in how the animals lived. Whales moved from the land to the ocean, birds started as terrestrial dinosaurs and took to the air and turtles were terrestrial reptiles that started burrowing underground. Bats follow the trend, undoubtedly starting from terrestrial mammal ancestors. The question is where the missing examples of early bats may be found.

“The short answer is, we don’t know why there is a missing record of ten million years,” says University of Birmingham paleontologist Emily Brown. Several factors may be at play, according to an assessment of the bat fossil record Brown and colleagues published last year.

Early bats’ choice of dwelling may have been a barrier to their preservation. “It’s previously been suggested that early bats may have predominantly lived in forested environments, which do not have very good preservation potential,” Brown says. Her survey found that the fossil record of modern bats that live in forests and jungles is largely incomplete, probably for the same reason.

The bats that modern scientists know best lived in places where rapid and delicate preservation entombed the tiny mammals. Some of the bones of Icaronycteris index, one of the earliest known bats and a neighbor of Onychonycteris, are as thin as a human hair. The only reason we know about these bats is that they lived around lakes that favored exceptional preservation; the fine sediment and oxygen-depleted water on the lake bottoms allowed fossils to be buried quickly in an environment scavengers and other decomposers couldn’t reach.

Brown says teeth make up most of the bat fossil record. Scientists often don’t have a clear picture of fossil bats unless they were preserved at exceptional sites that yield complete or articulated skeletons. It’s these types of deposits, called lagerstatten, that paleontologists will have to find to solve the mystery. The only way to understand when bats first appeared, how they evolved to fly, and more, Brown says, is to find more of these exceptional sites from rocks 50 to 66 million years old.

Icaronycteris fossil

(Wiki Commons / Andrew Savedra)

Refining our sense of what an early proto-bat might look like is also essential. The current record doesn’t offer many hints. Consider Onychonycteris, one of the oldest known bats featuring some of the most complete remains. While this mammal has more primitive limb proportions and claws on its fingers, says Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist Kevin Seymour, “it is still a bat.” The closest paleontologists can get to understanding this animal is looking at living mouse-tailed bats, Seymour notes, which use a combination of fluttering and gliding to move through the air.

What came before is only speculative. Bats are mammals, and so the earliest bats were certainly furry. Based on finds such as Onychonycteris, it’s reasonable to propose that bats went through a gliding stage before powered flight, Seymour says, and the first bats probably were insectivores. But that’s about all scientists can say with confidence without a relatively complete fossil to fill in the gap “It will certainly require articulated material,” Seymour says, relatively complete fossils acting as keystones to the tiny fossils of Paleocene and Eocene mammals that may already be resting in museums drawers.

While experts search for the relevant fossils, other mammals may offer a rough guide of what to expect. Bats may be the only mammals to evolve powered flapping flight, but other mammal species from flying squirrels to a lemur-like creature called the colugo can glide through the air on expanded membranes. The earliest bats probably evolved along a similar route, with some extra skin allowing them to move from tree to tree.

New information about existing fossils buttresses the idea that the earliest bats scampered around in the trees. In 2013, paleontologists Kevin Padian and Kenneth Dial presented research at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting that noted some of the earliest bats had hindlimbs that flexed to the side, rather than aligning directly beneath the body. This arrangement is more consistent with climbing rock faces and trees than walking on the ground. Searching for more tree-living beasts will help connect the fossil dots.

At least paleontologists know which time frame to investigate. Some of the oldest known bats are not single skeletons, but made up bat communities of multiple species. This means that bats were already diversifying by 50 million years ago and that their ancestors are much older–perhaps springing up after the extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Proto-bats are going to be found in rocks from that window of time when a strange group of mammals was just starting to take wing.

#Nature

[orbemnews]

Uprooting Colonialism From the Fossil-Finding Field In 2019, Mohamad Bazzi, a doctoral student at Uppsala University in Sweden, launched an expedition to Tunisia in search of fossils. He and his colleagues traveled to the phosphate mines around the city of Gafsa, where 56 million-year-old rocks record a time of rapidly warming oceans and mass extinctions, particularly of apex predators like sharks. Mr. Bazzi made some distinctive choices for this paleontological expedition. For starters, his team hired Tunisians to help dig, rather than bringing students from his university. Mr. Bazzi and his colleagues also chose to reach out to the residents of Gafsa wherever possible, holding impromptu lectures on the area’s fossil history to interested onlookers. This was a contrast with the secretiveness of many paleontologists in the field, who might worry about their sites being raided for the fossil black market. The fossils the team collected from Gafsa are important for learning more about how animals adapted to the hothouse world of the Eocene, a period that may foretell what’s in store for the planet in coming years if carbon emissions don’t slow. But while Mr. Bazzi’s team removed the fossils from Tunisia, they did so under an agreement with local institutions that Mr. Bazzi himself insisted on: After he finished his research, the remains would be returned. Historically, these specimens are seldom returned, and locals may never see them again. But Mr. Bazzi and his colleagues are part of a movement among the next generation of paleontological researchers, one attempting to change scientific practices that descend directly from 19th century colonialism, which exploited native peoples and their natural histories. Over the last few decades, multiple countries have demanded the return of looted art, antiquities, cultural treasures and human remains from museum collections in North America and Europe. Countries such as Mongolia and Chile have likewise demanded the return of collected fossils, from tyrannosaur bones to the preserved remains of giant ground sloths. “There’s a consistent pattern with these specimens of high scientific or aesthetic value, where they’re taken out of the developing world and shipped abroad to be displayed and shown to a wider audience elsewhere,” Mr. Bazzi said. “There should be some balance so that local parties have a say in what happens to them.” Many countries with less money to spend on funding their own scientists are home to important fossil deposits that could drive major advances of our understanding of the prehistoric world. If the field of paleontology is to move forward, these researchers say, it’s important to figure out how to study specimens in these places without extending colonial legacies. That will take the development of a different approach to the field, more like the ones being tried by Mr. Bazzi and other scientists that rely less on extraction and more on collaboration with and the development of local institutions. While many cultures throughout human history have long traditions around collecting or studying fossil remains, the discipline of scientific paleontology — as well as the formation of modern natural history museums — arose in the 18th century, when European powers were actively colonizing large swaths of the globe. According to Emma Dunne, an Irish paleontologist at University of Birmingham in England, European scientists were part of a colonial network that sucked natural wealth — including fossils — into imperial capitals. In the 20th century, some countries pushed back. Brazil and Argentina provide government funding of paleontology. Those countries and others, such as Mongolia, established laws forbidding the export of fossils from within their borders. The two South American countries also mandate that foreign researchers work with local paleontologists for research on fossils found in the country. “You still do have non-Argentinian researchers working with local ones, for example,” said Nussaibah Raja-Schoob, a Mauritian paleontologist based at Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. “But you definitely see that there is a bigger local influence.” Even in the aftermath of colonialism, however, fossils from across the globe still tend to end up in American and European museums. Some are collected through approved scientific expeditions. But because fossils are also traded privately, fossil-rich countries with fewer resources and legal protections often see interesting and potentially valuable finds put up for auction in Western markets. Questions about where fossils belong and who is best suited to work on them have sparked sharp controversies in recent years. In some cases, researchers have raised concerns about the ethics of working on such privately collected fossils — particularly those which may have been exported illegally. At the same time, paleontologists in Western countries have bristled at the rules required by countries like Brazil. In one case in 2015, David Martill, a paleobiologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, dismissed questions about his team’s lack of collaboration with Brazilian researchers on a specimen found there. “I mean, do you want me also to have a Black person on the team for ethnicity reasons, and a cripple and a woman, and maybe a homosexual too just for a bit of all round balance?” he said in an interview at the time with Herton Escobar, a Brazilian science journalist. Dr. Martill said in an interview in December that he chose his words poorly. But he said he remains opposed to laws that dictate where fossils go. In 2020, he was a co-author of a paper on another find exported from Brazil and described without a Brazilian co-author. “I do not think governments should dictate who works on fossils,” he said. “I think scientists should be able to choose who they work with.” These sorts of controversies are one example of the way the discipline’s colonial history lingers, Ms. Raja-Schoob says. But there are others. Much of global paleontology is still conducted in languages like English, German and French. And according to an ongoing research project by Ms. Raja-Schoob and Dr. Dunne, countries with higher G.D.P.s — places like the United States, France, Germany and China — tend to report more fossil data, in part because they have the money to invest in academic paleontology programs. Many institutions around the world have neither the tools nor enough government support for sophisticated studies of fossils. But that is something scientific institutions from wealthier countries can help with. “We have to ask why we’re bringing this knowledge to the centers, rather than spreading it out,” Dr. Dunne said. “We can work with things like 3-D scans of fossils, we can work with digital data sets. The problem obviously is getting funding for museums to do this for themselves.” Ms. Raja-Schoob said that academic funding could promote geology and paleontology in more countries. “Why not put that money into local people doing something?” she asked. “At the end of the day we are all going to be using that data. So why should they not also benefit?” While the fossil riches present in the rocks of North Africa and the Levant have long drawn fossil hunters and scientists, Mr. Bazzi said, the majority of fieldwork has resulted in fossils being exported to European or American institutions. Mr. Bazzi’s parents are from Lebanon, while his colleague Yara Haridy — a doctoral student at Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde — was born in Egypt. Because of the lack of opportunities, neither can find steady academic work in paleontology in the Middle East. As part of their trip to Gafsa, both wanted to try to start building up paleontological resources instead of just removing them. That was part of what led Mr. Bazzi and Ms. Haridy — after many careful conversations with local participants over coffee and tea — to the ruins of a museum in the small mining town of Métlaoui. The museum had been burned down during the protests of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution that helped trigger the Arab Spring. It had not been restored, and on their third day in Tunisia, a mining engineer told them it might be worth visiting. Stepping carefully through the ruins, they found an unexpected wealth of fossil material: immense turtle shells, crocodile jawbones, dinosaur vertebrae and even ancient human remains, all scattered across dusty floors and charred rubble. The collection had to be salvaged, the team decided, but not taken out of the country. “Every other question we got was, ‘Oh, are you guys going to take this stuff?,’” Ms. Haridy said. “And we told them, no, it’s yours. It should stay here. It’s part of this region’s story.” Instead, they partnered with the people of Métlaoui to help them save the remains. Within a day, the town’s mayor and other community authorities had assembled local workers and students from Gafsa University. Mr. Bazzi’s team handed out gloves and masks and a stream of Métlaoui residents went to work pulling fossils from the ruins. “It was a pretty big operation,” Ms. Haridy said. “Everyone got really excited.” The team cataloged the bones before boxing and sending them to a government facility in Gafsa. The hope is that the museum remains will provide the nucleus for an ongoing paleontology program at Gafsa University; Mr. Bazzi has been helping to supervise interested students. One such student, Mohammed Messai, said that he didn’t know much about paleontology before meeting Mr. Bazzi, but that he’s now made identifying the fossils recovered from the museum part of the research for his master’s degree in science. It’s important for paleontologists to build genuine partnerships with local researchers, Ms. Haridy said. Not only does this create community engagement and prompt people to regard fossils as worth protecting, it also helps ensure that specimens are properly studied when they are returned to their country of origin. “There’s this problem where even if a country demands fossils back, like Egypt did for a long time, a lot of the paleontological knowledge doesn’t necessarily return with it,” she said. Without investing in independent paleontology programs in the countries in question, fossils can end up “consigned to a dusty room, where nobody knows what to do with it.” But efforts to create more inclusive and distributed paleontological networks face considerable headwinds. “Funders don’t necessarily put any emphasis on the ethical side of the research,” Dr. Dunne said. “We do rely a lot on other countries for their data. Fossils are worldwide, they’re global, they don’t respect political boundaries. But we should be identifying these patterns of colonial bias in our research and stopping them.” To some extent, the presence of these conversations is itself a sign of change. “When I began paleontology some 45 years ago these issues were of no concern,” Dr. Martill said. “Today, they seem to be dominating paleontological discussions. Perhaps it is me who is now out of touch.” He added that, “a fantastic new generation of paleontologists emerging and they are flexing their muscles and demanding different things.” For now, Mr. Bazzi’s team hopes to drive funding toward local paleontology in Tunisia. “Ideally, the Tunisian government would just believe these people on their own and agree that their fossils are important and worthy of preservation, and is of international interest,” Ms. Haridy said. “But they tend to get interested once scientists are actually actively trying to visit and actively trying to work with people.” “You now have local people starting to drive this themselves,” Mr. Bazzi said. “Eventually there will be no need for others to come and do it.” Source link Orbem News #Colonialism #field #FossilFinding #Uprooting

[earthstory]

wightcoastfossils

🐢 Check out this gorgeous chunk of 33 million year old soft-shell turtle (Trionyx) carapace from the north coast of the island yesterday!

Fossil turtle shell is a super common find on the north coast of the Isle of Wight! Our beaches are full of it! They come from our Late Eocene/Early Oligocene Solent Group clays, and can be found along with the fossils of alligators, fish, birds and mammals!

The Isle of Wight during the Oligocene was a swampy and subtropical landscape! So much so that Trionyx is only found in Africa and the Middle East today!

[alphynix]

Gamerabaena sonsalla, a baenid freshwater turtle that lived at the very end of the Cretaceous (~66 mya) in North Dakota, USA. Known only from a single skull, its full size is uncertain, but it may have reached lengths of around 50cm (1′7″).

Its genus name was inspired by Gamera, a fictional giant turtle from a series of Japanese kaiju movies.

Baenids first appeared in the mid-Cretaceous (~112 mya) -- although their ancestry may go as far back as the Late Jurassic (~150 mya) -- and were part of an early lineage of the cryptodiran turtles, the grouping which includes most freshwater turtles and terrapins, all terrestrial tortoises, and all sea turtles. However, unlike many of the their modern cousins, they weren’t capable of fully retracting their heads inside their shells.

They survived well through the K-Pg mass extinction, with several species found on both sides of the boundary, but eventually went extinct in the mid-Eocene (~42 mya).

[uk-fossils]

Trionyx Fossil Turtle Shell – Eocene Barton Beds Hampshire UK, Genuine Softshell Turtle Fossil

An exceptional and rare Trionyx fossil turtle shell discovered in the Barton Formation (Barton Beds), dating to the Eocene Epoch (~40 million years ago). This impressive specimen was collected by our dedicated fossil team members Alister and Alison on 08 June 2024 from Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, and has been professionally cleaned, prepped, and treated by Alison.

Trionyx is a genus of extinct softshell turtles within the family Trionychidae, known for their leathery shells and aquatic adaptations. Their fossils are rarely found complete, making this partial shell specimen a significant and highly desirable piece.

Fossil Type: Turtle Shell (Reptile – Trionychidae)

Genus: Trionyx

Geological Age: Eocene – Bartonian Stage

Formation: Barton Formation (Barton Clay)

Depositional Environment: The Barton Beds were laid down in a shallow, subtropical marine to marginal marine environment with estuarine influence. These coastal systems were rich in life and conducive to the preservation of both marine and nearshore vertebrates.

Morphological Features:

Flattened carapace (shell) fragments typical of softshell turtles

Possible preserved margin or plastron elements

Mineralised bone texture visible under close inspection

Notable:

Rare Eocene turtle fossil from a classic British fossil site

Discovered and prepared by our own team with full provenance

Ideal for collectors, display, or educational use

The exact specimen shown is the one you will receive

Authenticity: All of our fossils are 100% genuine natural specimens and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The scale cube in the image equals 1cm – please refer to the photo for full sizing.

This Trionyx fossil turtle shell from the Eocene of Barton-on-Sea offers a rare and scientifically valuable glimpse into the reptilian life of Britain’s ancient coastal environments. A standout piece for collectors and fossil enthusiasts.

[uk-fossils]

Trionyx Fossil Turtle Shell – Eocene Barton Beds Hampshire UK, Genuine Softshell Turtle Fossil

An exceptional and rare Trionyx fossil turtle shell discovered in the Barton Formation (Barton Beds), dating to the Eocene Epoch (~40 million years ago). This impressive specimen was collected by our dedicated fossil team members Alister and Alison on 08 June 2024 from Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, and has been professionally cleaned, prepped, and treated by Alison.

Trionyx is a genus of extinct softshell turtles within the family Trionychidae, known for their leathery shells and aquatic adaptations. Their fossils are rarely found complete, making this partial shell specimen a significant and highly desirable piece.

Fossil Type: Turtle Shell (Reptile – Trionychidae)

Genus: Trionyx

Geological Age: Eocene – Bartonian Stage

Formation: Barton Formation (Barton Clay)

Depositional Environment: The Barton Beds were laid down in a shallow, subtropical marine to marginal marine environment with estuarine influence. These coastal systems were rich in life and conducive to the preservation of both marine and nearshore vertebrates.

Morphological Features:

Flattened carapace (shell) fragments typical of softshell turtles

Possible preserved margin or plastron elements

Mineralised bone texture visible under close inspection

Notable:

Rare Eocene turtle fossil from a classic British fossil site

Discovered and prepared by our own team with full provenance

Ideal for collectors, display, or educational use

The exact specimen shown is the one you will receive

Authenticity: All of our fossils are 100% genuine natural specimens and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The scale cube in the image equals 1cm – please refer to the photo for full sizing.

This Trionyx fossil turtle shell from the Eocene of Barton-on-Sea offers a rare and scientifically valuable glimpse into the reptilian life of Britain’s ancient coastal environments. A standout piece for collectors and fossil enthusiasts.

[uk-fossils]

Trionyx Fossil Turtle Shell – Eocene Barton Beds Hampshire UK, Genuine Softshell Turtle Fossil

An exceptional and rare Trionyx fossil turtle shell discovered in the Barton Formation (Barton Beds), dating to the Eocene Epoch (~40 million years ago). This impressive specimen was collected by our dedicated fossil team members Alister and Alison on 08 June 2024 from Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, and has been professionally cleaned, prepped, and treated by Alison.

Trionyx is a genus of extinct softshell turtles within the family Trionychidae, known for their leathery shells and aquatic adaptations. Their fossils are rarely found complete, making this partial shell specimen a significant and highly desirable piece.

Fossil Type: Turtle Shell (Reptile – Trionychidae)

Genus: Trionyx

Geological Age: Eocene – Bartonian Stage

Formation: Barton Formation (Barton Clay)

Depositional Environment: The Barton Beds were laid down in a shallow, subtropical marine to marginal marine environment with estuarine influence. These coastal systems were rich in life and conducive to the preservation of both marine and nearshore vertebrates.

Morphological Features:

Flattened carapace (shell) fragments typical of softshell turtles

Possible preserved margin or plastron elements

Mineralised bone texture visible under close inspection

Notable:

Rare Eocene turtle fossil from a classic British fossil site

Discovered and prepared by our own team with full provenance

Ideal for collectors, display, or educational use

The exact specimen shown is the one you will receive

Authenticity: All of our fossils are 100% genuine natural specimens and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The scale cube in the image equals 1cm – please refer to the photo for full sizing.

This Trionyx fossil turtle shell from the Eocene of Barton-on-Sea offers a rare and scientifically valuable glimpse into the reptilian life of Britain’s ancient coastal environments. A standout piece for collectors and fossil enthusiasts.

[uk-fossils]

Trionyx Fossil Turtle Shell – Eocene Barton Beds Hampshire UK, Genuine Softshell Turtle Fossil

An exceptional and rare Trionyx fossil turtle shell discovered in the Barton Formation (Barton Beds), dating to the Eocene Epoch (~40 million years ago). This impressive specimen was collected by our dedicated fossil team members Alister and Alison on 08 June 2024 from Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, and has been professionally cleaned, prepped, and treated by Alison.

Trionyx is a genus of extinct softshell turtles within the family Trionychidae, known for their leathery shells and aquatic adaptations. Their fossils are rarely found complete, making this partial shell specimen a significant and highly desirable piece.

Fossil Type: Turtle Shell (Reptile – Trionychidae)

Genus: Trionyx

Geological Age: Eocene – Bartonian Stage

Formation: Barton Formation (Barton Clay)

Depositional Environment: The Barton Beds were laid down in a shallow, subtropical marine to marginal marine environment with estuarine influence. These coastal systems were rich in life and conducive to the preservation of both marine and nearshore vertebrates.

Morphological Features:

Flattened carapace (shell) fragments typical of softshell turtles

Possible preserved margin or plastron elements

Mineralised bone texture visible under close inspection

Notable:

Rare Eocene turtle fossil from a classic British fossil site

Discovered and prepared by our own team with full provenance

Ideal for collectors, display, or educational use

The exact specimen shown is the one you will receive

Authenticity: All of our fossils are 100% genuine natural specimens and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The scale cube in the image equals 1cm – please refer to the photo for full sizing.

This Trionyx fossil turtle shell from the Eocene of Barton-on-Sea offers a rare and scientifically valuable glimpse into the reptilian life of Britain’s ancient coastal environments. A standout piece for collectors and fossil enthusiasts.

[uk-fossils]

RARE: Trionyx Fossil Turtle Ulna – Bracklesham Beds, Eocene, Bracklesham Bay Sussex UK

This listing offers a rare fossil ulna (forelimb bone) from a turtle of the genus Trionyx, collected from the Bracklesham Beds at Bracklesham Bay, Sussex, United Kingdom. Dating to the Eocene Epoch, this specimen represents part of the limb structure of a soft-shelled turtle, offering a fascinating glimpse into the marine and coastal ecosystems of southern England over 40 million years ago.

Fossil Type:

Specimen: Turtle Forelimb Bone – Ulna

Genus: Trionyx

Part of the limb articulation of a soft-shelled turtle (Family Trionychidae)

Geological Context:

Period: Paleogene

Epoch: Eocene

Stage: Lutetian (~47.8 to 41.3 million years ago)

Formation: Bracklesham Beds (part of the Bracklesham Group)

Depositional Environment: Shallow marine to coastal estuarine. These beds were laid down in warm subtropical waters with rich biodiversity, capturing both terrestrial and marine vertebrate fossils.

Morphological Features:

Elongated ulna with characteristic curvature, consistent with Trionychid turtles

Dense, fossilised bone with smoothed cortical surface and mineralised preservation typical of Bracklesham material

Colour ranges from brown to grey with natural patina, shaped by burial conditions in marine clay and sand

Scientific Importance:

Trionyx represents a lineage of soft-shelled turtles still found today in Asia, Africa, and North America. Fossils from the UK are rare and of high scientific and collector value

Specimens like this contribute to our understanding of Eocene chelonian diversity and the palaeoenvironment of Britain’s coastal systems during the Paleogene

Locality Information:

Bracklesham Bay, Sussex, UK – one of Britain’s most important fossil sites, known for its Eocene marine fauna including sharks, rays, turtles, crocodiles, and fish

Authenticity & Display:

All of our fossils are 100% Genuine Specimens and are accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. The photographs show the actual fossil you will receive. Full sizing can be viewed in the image provided, with the scale cube = 1cm.

This is a truly rare fossilised limb bone from a soft-shelled turtle that lived in ancient subtropical seas. A premium collector’s piece for fossil enthusiasts, reptile specialists, and palaeontologists alike.

Own a rare piece of Britain's Eocene natural history—an authentic limb bone of Trionyx from over 40 million years ago.

[uk-fossils]

Rare Paleocene-Eocene Turtle Scute Fossil - Oldhaven Beds, Herne Bay, Kent, UK - w/ Certificate

This rare fossilized turtle scute, sourced from the Oldhaven Beds in Beltinge, near Herne Bay, Kent, UK, dates back to the transition between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, approximately 56 million years ago. This beautifully preserved specimen captures a unique piece of ancient reptilian history, offering a glimpse into the turtle species that once inhabited the region. Each fossil in our collection is 100% genuine and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity, ensuring its historical and scientific significance.

Turtle scutes are the individual bony plates that make up a turtle’s shell, providing both protection and structural support. This particular scute fossil displays excellent detail, with visible ridges and texture typical of turtle scutes from this period, making it an intriguing and scientifically valuable addition to any fossil collection. Fossils like this are highly prized for the insights they offer into ancient ecosystems and the evolution of reptiles.

Type: Turtle scute fossil

Origin: Oldhaven Beds, Beltinge, near Herne Bay, Kent, UK

Geological Period: Paleocene-Eocene (~56 million years ago)

Authenticity: 100% genuine, with a Certificate of Authenticity provided

Condition: Excellent preservation with distinct ridges and surface texture

Scale and Sizing: Scale cube in photos represents 1cm; please refer to images for full size details

Specimen Specificity: The photo shows the exact specimen you will receive

This rare turtle scute fossil is ideal for collectors, educators, or enthusiasts of prehistoric reptiles. Its distinct features and exceptional preservation offer a tangible connection to Earth’s early Cenozoic era. Don’t miss the chance to add this genuine Paleocene-Eocene turtle scute fossil to your collection and own a real piece of ancient history!