Prehistoric giant turtle shell is the biggest ever found

NEW fossils of the largest non-marine turtle to have ever lived have been discovered in the Tatacoa desert in Colombia. These include the biggest complete turtle shell ever found, a 2.4-metre-long carapace that is more than twice the size of the largest living turtle, the leatherback sea turtle.

This shell of Stupendemys geographicus is pictured here next to Rodolfo Sánchez at the Urumaco Paleontology Museum in Venezuela. Sánchez and his colleagues studied the newly found fossils alongside several other specimens discovered in 1994. Although S. geographicus was first described in 1976, little was known about the turtle…