A fossilized turtle shell that sat unnoticed for decades in the collection at the University of Alabama actually belongs to a previously unknown species of ‘giant’ freshwater turtle that roamed the state during the time of the dinosaurs, according to research published today.
Researchers now based at the Alabama School of Math and Science, California State University-Fullerton, and the McWane Science Center in Birmingham published a paper describing the previously unknown species of turtle that lived approximately 83 million years ago.
Andrew Gentry, now a member of the faculty at the Alabama School of Math and Science, began researching the turtle while he was finishing his PhD in biology at UAB and is the lead author on the publication.
“The thing that really stood out to us was its size,” Gentry told AL.com. “It was gigantic.
“Freshwater turtles are generally a lot smaller than the marine species, but this thing was roughly the same size as some of the sea turtles that were around during that period of time.”
The new species -- named Appalachemys ebersolei -- is part of an extinct group of large, freshwater turtles called macrobaenids that have been found in North America and Asia dating to approximately 90-55 million years ago.
At the time, much of south Alabama was underwater, as dinosaurs like Appalachiasaurus roamed the land. Like many land-based fossils from that time period, the Appalachemys remains were discovered in a marine deposit, likely because the animal died near the coast and its remains washed out to sea where they were preserved in the mud.
The ancient turtle also would have had to deal with predators including massive crocodiles, dinosaurs and mosasaurs, perhaps one reason it developed such a large protective shell.
Gentry said that the remains of the new species were at first assumed to be from a marine sea turtle when they were collected in the 1980s and weren’t thought to be significant. As a result, the researchers don’t even have a definite location as to where it was collected because the records around the fossil were incomplete.
Gentry said that soil analysis of the material surrounding the fossil shell has helped the researchers narrow the location to a handful of possible locations for the fossil discovery, all in east-central Alabama, and to establish that the shell is between 83 and 85 million years old.
The shell was kept in storage at the Alabama Museum of Natural History for about 25 years until James Parham, then curator of the museum and now a professor at UC Fullerton, realized the remains were something different and began investigating.
“I was aware of the specimen for more than a year after becoming curator but never examined it closely because it was mislabeled as a common species,” Parham said in a news release. “When I finally opened the cabinet where it was stored, I knew immediately that it was important. I’ll never forget that moment.”
After moving to California, Parham asked the graduate student Gentry to continue the investigation, the results of which were published today in the scientific journal The Anatomical Record. Caitlyn Kiernan of the McWane Science Center also contributed and is listed as a co-author.
The new species was named for Jun Ebersole, collections director at the McWane Science Center, for his lifetime contributions to paleontology in Alabama.
“Jun has been one of the most vocal proponents of paleontological research in Alabama,” Gentry said. “He is a prolific publisher, and has named dozens of fossil species from Alabama, which in turn, has drawn attention to Alabama paleontology in a way that very few people before him, have been able to do.
“The work that he continues to do in collecting and cataloging and studying the fossils of Alabama is invaluable, and we hoped that by naming this significant species after Jun that it would in some way recognize his contributions to Alabama paleontology.”
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