![]() The Spanish scientists concluded that giant sea turtles did not only develop in North America but now also in Europe. The fossil can be found in the Natural History Museum of Vienna and is estimated to have lived about 70 million years ago. The largest sea turtle fossil recorded in the world was found in South America, it is called Archelon ischyros and is 4.5 m long. The research team estimated that the ancient animal lived during the Cretaceous Period, making it at least 72 million years old. The researchers published the paper of the discovery in the Scientific Reports journal on November 17, 2022. 'Turtle' may either refer to the Testudines as a whole, or to particular Testudines which make up a form taxon that is not monophyleticsee also sea turtle, terrapin, tortoise. The two partial limb fossils from the ancient sea turtle Atlantochelys mortoni fit together perfectly, leaving little room for doubt that they are from the same bone. The Loggerhead Sea Turtle is the most common one to nest on our beaches. Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines (the crown group of the superorder Chelonia), characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield. "Leviathan" is a biblical term for a sea monster while "chelys" translates as turtle and "aenigmatica" translates to enigma - in reference to the strange characteristics of the turtle. Loggerhead Sea turtles have been part of our geological fossil records for over. The species was named Leviathanochelys aenigmatica. They soon returned to the site to conduct more excavations. Researchers at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, led by Ángel Luján and Albert Seles, began studying the bones in 2021, and realized that they had a new species of sea turtle completely new to science. Archelon, extinct giant sea turtle known from fossilized remains found in North American rocks of the Late Cretaceous epoch (100 million to 66 million years ago). The fossil was discovered by a hiker in 2016 in the Pyrenees mountains of northern Spain, but no one examined the bones for nearly five years. In 2021, scientists discovered an unknown species of a huge ancient sea turtle in Spain with a length of 3.74 m, which is now the largest sea turtle found in Europe. Until recently these prehistoric giants, reaching over 3 meters in length from head to tail, were thought to be found only in the waters surrounding North America. Apparently, millions of years ago giant sea turtles swam in Earth's seas. ![]()
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