I like giant turtles of the Cenozoic


It seems the giant snake Titanoboa had a contemporary giant reptile cousin. A slow, plodding archosaur known affectionately to millions of youngsters today as a turtle. Only this fresh water gal was the size of a small car:

(Planet Save) — “We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period — and it gave us the first evidence of giantism in freshwater turtles,” Cadena says.

“Smaller relatives of theirs had existed alongside the dinosaurs, but after the dinosaurs were gone, this giant version appeared in the fossil record. Similar increases in scale happened in other animals during this period, such as Titanoboa cerrejobensis, the largest snake ever discovered.

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