New fossil turtle remains from the Eocene of the Antarctic Peninsula

PAULA BONA; MARCELO S. DE LA FUENTE; MARCELO A.

ANTARCTIC SCIENCE

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Año: 2010 vol. 22 p. 531 - 532

0954-1020

The fossil record of reptiles from the Paleogene of Antarctica is very scarce. Only postcranial fragments of Dermochelyidae turtles have been recovered from several localities on Seymour (Marambio) Island. The fossils previously described include a few isolated carapace ossicles and a small fragment of carapace with four sutured ossicles, and were tentatively assigned to the leatherback turtle , a genus whose species are recorded from the middle to upper Eocene to Pliocene of Europe, New Zeland , and North America. In this contribution we describe two turtle costal plates with a relative big size and smooth decoration, recently recovered from the middle levels of the La Meseta Formation Seymour Island. This new material represents the first record of a turtle with a bony carapace from the Eocene of Antarctica, and it increases the diversity of the group on this continent.