Characteristics found on the prehistoric turtles' fossilized skeletons reveal close ties to reptiles.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has uncovered the 228 million-year-old fossilized bones of prehistoric turtles in Guilin Province, Guizhou Province, southwest China. This is the oldest known fossil turtle ever discovered, which is important in studying the evolution of sea turtles, the China Daily reported on Aug. 23.
According to lead researcher Li Chun, paleontologist of the CAS, the newly discovered prehistoric tortoise is nearly 2.5 meters long, having a modern turtle-like, but short-stemmed mine. there is tomorrow They are named Eorhynchochelys sinensis, which means 'the first turtle to have a beak in China'.
The fossils are dated from the end of the Three Feathers, in the same time as the first dinosaurs to dominate the Earth. Eorhynchochelys are thought to have lived in prehistoric coastal areas.
'They have large claws, which can be used as a coastal mud dredging tool, to look for food such as mollusks and arthropods,' said Nick Fraser of the Scottish National Museum. the author of the study said.
Eorhynchochelys turtles also provided clearer evidence of the evolutionary origins of modern turtles, a subject of much debate in the field of paleontology. Scientists are not sure whether modern turtles have evolved from a reptile.
Most reptiles, such as crocodiles, lizards and snakes, have a special hole in the skull called the fenestra, which allows the jaw muscles to attach to the skull, but this feature is not found in the skull. Today's turtles. This led to the idea that the ancestors of modern tortoises belonged to a far more distant reptile.
However, the team found the fenestra hole in the skull of the Eorhynchochely tortoise inside the fossil found in China. This finding is strong evidence that the evolution of turtles is related to reptiles. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature on Aug. 22.