Paleontologists from North Carolina State University have found a turtle the size of a small car. The 60-million-year-old South American giant lived once in what is now Colombia.
The giant turtle is Carbonemys cofrinii, which means ‘coal turtle’, and its shell measures 172 centimeters, or about 5 feet 7 inches, long.
“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,” Edwin Cadena, the NC State doctoral student who discovered the fossil, says.
source NC State
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