TrackerSam
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Remains of an enormous turtle, which was the size of a Smart Car, have been unearthed in a Colombian coal mine.
The shell alone of the 60-million-year-old turtle, Carbonemys cofrinii, aka "coal turtle," is large enough to be a small swimming pool. Its skull is roughly the size of a regulation NFL football.
Turtles today are usually seen slowly chewing plants, but this prehistoric species had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled it to eat anything nearby, from mollusks to smaller turtles or even crocodiles.
Dan Ksepka, N.C. State paleontologist and research associate at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, thinks only one specimen of the turtle was found because a turtle of this size would need a large territory in order to obtain enough food to survive.
"It's like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake," said co-author Ksepka. "That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though -- in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth."
http://news.discovery.com/animals/car-sized-turtle-found-in-colombian-coal-mine.html
The shell alone of the 60-million-year-old turtle, Carbonemys cofrinii, aka "coal turtle," is large enough to be a small swimming pool. Its skull is roughly the size of a regulation NFL football.
Turtles today are usually seen slowly chewing plants, but this prehistoric species had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled it to eat anything nearby, from mollusks to smaller turtles or even crocodiles.
Dan Ksepka, N.C. State paleontologist and research associate at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, thinks only one specimen of the turtle was found because a turtle of this size would need a large territory in order to obtain enough food to survive.
"It's like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake," said co-author Ksepka. "That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though -- in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth."
http://news.discovery.com/animals/car-sized-turtle-found-in-colombian-coal-mine.html
