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A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil

Fossils of Cretaceous sea turtles adapted to an open marine lifestyle remain rare finds to date. Furthermore, the relationships between extant sea turtles, chelonioids, and other Mesozoic marine turtles are still contested, with one key species being Santanachelys gaffneyi Hirayama, 1998, long consi...

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Autores principales: Scheyer, Torsten M., Oliveira, Gustavo R., Romano, Pedro S. R., Bastiaans, Dylan, Falco, Lisa, Ferreira, Gabriel S., Rabi, Márton
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10163108/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163143
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13358-023-00271-9
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author Scheyer, Torsten M.
Oliveira, Gustavo R.
Romano, Pedro S. R.
Bastiaans, Dylan
Falco, Lisa
Ferreira, Gabriel S.
Rabi, Márton
author_facet Scheyer, Torsten M.
Oliveira, Gustavo R.
Romano, Pedro S. R.
Bastiaans, Dylan
Falco, Lisa
Ferreira, Gabriel S.
Rabi, Márton
author_sort Scheyer, Torsten M.
collection PubMed
description Fossils of Cretaceous sea turtles adapted to an open marine lifestyle remain rare finds to date. Furthermore, the relationships between extant sea turtles, chelonioids, and other Mesozoic marine turtles are still contested, with one key species being Santanachelys gaffneyi Hirayama, 1998, long considered the earliest true sea turtle. The species is an Early Cretaceous member of Protostegidae, a controversial clade either placed within or closely related to Chelonioidea or, alternatively, along the stem lineage of hidden-neck turtles (Cryptodira) and representing an independent open marine radiation. Santanachelys gaffneyi is one of the most completely preserved early protostegids and is therefore critical for establishing the global phylogenetic position of the group. However, the single known specimen of this taxon is yet to be described in detail. Here we describe a second specimen of Santanachelys gaffneyi from its type horizon, the Romualdo Formation (late Aptian) of the Santana Group of the Araripe basin, NE Brazil. The skeletal elements preserved include the posterior part of the skull, neck vertebrae, shoulder girdle, anterior-most and left/central part of the carapace with few peripherals, and plastron lacking most of the hyoplastra. The remaining part of the carapace was apparently completed by fossil dealers using an anterior part of the pleurodiran Araripemydidae, tentatively identified as a shell portion of cf. Araripemys barretoi, a more common Santana fossil turtle, among other indeterminate turtle shell fragments. The purpose of this paper is to report the repatriation of the specimen to Brazil and to provide a preliminary description. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13358-023-00271-9.
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spelling pubmed-101631082023-05-07 A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil Scheyer, Torsten M. Oliveira, Gustavo R. Romano, Pedro S. R. Bastiaans, Dylan Falco, Lisa Ferreira, Gabriel S. Rabi, Márton Swiss J Palaeontol Research Article Fossils of Cretaceous sea turtles adapted to an open marine lifestyle remain rare finds to date. Furthermore, the relationships between extant sea turtles, chelonioids, and other Mesozoic marine turtles are still contested, with one key species being Santanachelys gaffneyi Hirayama, 1998, long considered the earliest true sea turtle. The species is an Early Cretaceous member of Protostegidae, a controversial clade either placed within or closely related to Chelonioidea or, alternatively, along the stem lineage of hidden-neck turtles (Cryptodira) and representing an independent open marine radiation. Santanachelys gaffneyi is one of the most completely preserved early protostegids and is therefore critical for establishing the global phylogenetic position of the group. However, the single known specimen of this taxon is yet to be described in detail. Here we describe a second specimen of Santanachelys gaffneyi from its type horizon, the Romualdo Formation (late Aptian) of the Santana Group of the Araripe basin, NE Brazil. The skeletal elements preserved include the posterior part of the skull, neck vertebrae, shoulder girdle, anterior-most and left/central part of the carapace with few peripherals, and plastron lacking most of the hyoplastra. The remaining part of the carapace was apparently completed by fossil dealers using an anterior part of the pleurodiran Araripemydidae, tentatively identified as a shell portion of cf. Araripemys barretoi, a more common Santana fossil turtle, among other indeterminate turtle shell fragments. The purpose of this paper is to report the repatriation of the specimen to Brazil and to provide a preliminary description. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13358-023-00271-9. Springer International Publishing 2023-05-05 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10163108/ /pubmed/37163143 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13358-023-00271-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Article
Scheyer, Torsten M.
Oliveira, Gustavo R.
Romano, Pedro S. R.
Bastiaans, Dylan
Falco, Lisa
Ferreira, Gabriel S.
Rabi, Márton
A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title_full A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title_fullStr A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title_full_unstemmed A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title_short A forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle Santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire Araripemys from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Group of Brazil
title_sort forged ‘chimera’ including the second specimen of the protostegid sea turtle santanachelys gaffneyi and shell parts of the pleurodire araripemys from the lower cretaceous santana group of brazil
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10163108/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163143
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13358-023-00271-9
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