Newly Discovered Fossil Giant Tortoise Named After Stephen King Novel Character
An international research team led by Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has described a new species of giant tortoise from the late Pleistocene. Peltocephalus maturin is at least 40,000 and at least 9,000 years old and comes from the Brazilian Amazon. With a shell length of around 180 centimeters, the species is one of the largest known freshwater turtles in the world. The armored carrier was named after the giant tortoise “Maturin”, a fictional character by best-selling author Stephen King .
With a maximum shell length of 140 centimeters, the Asian narrow-headed softshell turtle ( Chitra chitra ) is one of the largest freshwater turtles alive today, along with the approximately 110 centimeter long South American river turtle ( Podocnemis expansa ). “In the past, we only know of a few turtles living in fresh waters that had a shell length of more than 150 centimeters,” explains Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen continues: “Such large animals are most recently known mainly from the Miocene, the period around 23 to five million years ago.”
Ferreira and an international team have now discovered a giant representative of this order of reptiles from the late Pleistocene period, around 40,000 to 9,000 years ago, and described it as a new species. The fossil remains – part of the turtle’s lower jaw – were collected by gold miners from the “Taquaras” quarry in Porto Velho, Brazil. Based on various characteristics, the research team assumes a close relationship with the extant fat-headed Amazon turtle ( Peltocephalus dumerilianus ) and an omnivorous diet. “We named the new species after the giant tortoise ‘Maturin’, an overarching protagonist in the Stephen King multiverse. “Maturin is responsible for the creation of the universe in King’s novels and films,” explains the Tübingen scientist.
The researchers’ analyzes show that the turtle was an animal with a shell that was around 180 centimeters long. “This is very surprising because freshwater turtles – in contrast to their terrestrial and marine relatives – rarely have such gigaforms and the youngest giant fossils known to date come from Miocene deposits,” adds Ferreira.
The new find is the youngest known occurrence of giant freshwater turtles and suggests that Peltocephalus maturin coexisted with early human inhabitants in the Amazon. “People settled in the Amazon region around 12,600 years ago. We also know that large tortoises have been on the diet of hominins since the Paleolithic. It is still unclear whether freshwater turtles, which are much more difficult to catch due to their mobility, were also used by early humans for consumption and whether Peltocephalus maturin – together with the South American megafauna – fell victim to human expansion. “Here we need more data from the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene deposits of the Amazon Basin,” says Ferreira, giving an outlook on future work.