One of the largest turtles that ever lived once prowled the lakes and rivers of northern South America… about 13 million years ago to 7 million years ago. Scientists unearthed new fossils of the turtle, called Stupendemys geographicus, in Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert and Venezuela’s Urumaco region Wednesday, and the results were shocking. A comprehensive understanding of the reptile revealed that it could grow up to 13 feet long and 1.25 tons in weight.
That’s the size of an Audi A4.
According to Reuters, they were built for combat. Stupendemys males, unlike the females, had front-facing horns on both sides of their carapace (shell) close to its neck. According to paleontologist Edwin Cadena of the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, who led the research published in the journal Science Advances, fighting occurs among certain turtles alive today, particularly male tortoises.
The best part is that Stupendemys is the second-largest known turtle. The first, the seagoing Archelon, which lived more than 70 million years ago at the end of the age of the dinosaurs, reached about 15 feet. “Stupendemys geographicus was huge and heavy,” Cadena added. “The largest individuals of this species were about the size of a sedan automobile if we take into account the head, neck, shell and limbs.”
Despite the stereotypes, turtles can move relatively quickly. The current leatherback sea turtle can reach speeds of 6.3 miles per hour or up to 22 miles per hour in the case of a frightened pacific leatherback. On land, they are much slower, but in the case of the Archelon, it was likely that the truck of a turtle could move even quicker and do more damage with its weight.
One of the Stupendemys turtles was found with a two-inch-long crocodile tooth embedded in it, suggesting that its large size may have been crucial in defending against larger predators. All those years ago, it shared the environment with giant crocodilians, including the 36-foot-long caiman Purussaurus and the 33-foot-long gavial relative Gryposuchus, according to Reuters.
The first Stupendemys fossils were found in the 1970s but revealed little about the animal. The new fossils also included lower jaw remains, which gave clues about its diet. A balanced meal for the beast was diverse: fishes, caimans, snakes, molluscs, fruit, seeds, and other vegetation. Its lifestyle, based on facts we now know, is that it likely lived in the bottom of large freshwater bodies including lakes and large rivers. It existed before the Amazon River ever formed, according to the BBC.
First published in print by The Stillman Exchange on February 24, 2020.
