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Title: A New Extinct Emydid Turtle from the Lower Pliocene of Oklahoma

Author: Edwin C. Galbreath

Release Date: November 26, 2010 [EBook #34449]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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[Pg 265]

A New Extinct Emydid Turtle from the Lower
Pliocene of Oklahoma

BY

EDWIN C. GALBREATH

University of Kansas Publications
Museum of Natural History

Volume 1, No. 16, pp. 265-280, plate 1
August 16, 1948

University of Kansas
LAWRENCE
1948

[Pg 266]

University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History

Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman; H. H. Lane, Edward H. Taylor

Volume 1, No. 16, pp. 265-280, plate 1
August 16, 1948


University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas

PRINTED BY
FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1948

22-3340

[Pg 267]

[Pg 268]

Plate 1. Chrysemys limnodytes. Univ. Kans. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vert. Paleo. Coll. No. 7676. Fig. A, dorsal view of carapace; fig. B, ventral view of plastron. Both views approximately × .4.

[Pg 269]

A New Extinct Emydid Turtle from the Lower Pliocene
of Oklahoma

By

EDWIN C. GALBREATH

In the summer of 1946 a party from the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History visited exposures of the Laverne formation in Beaver County, Oklahoma, at the invitation of Dr. Stuart Schoff of the United States Geological Survey. When examining the marl beds an Emydid turtle was discovered which appears to be an unnamed species of the genus Chrysemys. A description of the new species follows.

Chrysemys limnodytes, new species

[Pg 271]

[Pg 272]

Hay attached considerable taxonomic importance to the characters of the nuchal and I find its characters to be fairly constant in the specimens of Emydidae examined. Although the nuchal of Chrysemys limnodytes is incomplete, it can be distinguished from the nuchals described by Hay as types of his several fossil Emydids. Differences in the nuchal, together with those in the carapace and plastron, serve to distinguish the species from other genera of the Emydidae.

When the specimen is compared with Chrysemys timida Hay, of the Nebraska Pleistocene, many similarities, mostly of generic rank, are seen. Chrysemys limnodytes is broader in relation to length than is either C. timida or any Recent specimen examined of the same size. The greatest allowance possible in estimating the length of C. limnodytes fails to bring the ratio of its breadth to length within the range of Recent specimens of similar size. Data from 96 specimens of Recent Chrysemys picta show that the ratio of length to width is not affected by sex, but that the ratio does vary with the age of the specimen. In young animals the length and width are approximately equal, but with further growth the length becomes relatively greater. Specimens in the length group of 135 to 144 mm. have the widths ranging from 71 to 81 per cent of the lengths. In all specimens larger than this, the ratio is in the low seventies, and the largest specimen, 177 mm. in length, has the width of the carapace amounting to only 74 per cent of the length. The fossil species, C. timida, with a length of 160 mm., has the width amounting to 75 per cent of the length, and C. limnodytes, with an estimated length of 180 mm., has the width amounting to 80.5 per cent of the length. C. timida is widest anteriorly, whereas C. limnodytes and the other species of the genus are widest posteriorly. Less obvious differences between the two fossils are the narrower anterior margin of the nuchal, the concave anterior end of the carapace, the sculptured surface of the carapace, and the relatively wider neurals and longer vertebrals of C. limnodytes.

DIMENSIONS OF THE TYPE SPECIMEN

(In millimeters)

Plates of the Carapace and Plastron

Scutes of Carapace and Plastron

Remarks.—Noteworthy is the intermediate nature of C. limnodytes when compared with species of the genera Chrysemys and Pseudemys. However, any resemblance to Pseudemys is not to be considered as evidence that C. limnodytes is in any way ancestral to the genus Pseudemys. The fossil specimens of Pseudemys from the Pliocene are too poorly known to allow the student certainly to place them in their correct systematic positions. The fossil Emydids from Western Europe, listed as species of Chrysemys, differ very much from this species, or belong to other genera of the family.

Only a few turtles are known from the Laverne formation. Hesse (Chaney and Elias, 1936) reported a small Testudo from the Laverne of Beaver County, Oklahoma, but neglected to state whether it was among the material borrowed by him from the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. The Museum has an incomplete carapace and plastron (No. 3101) of a small Testudo from that locality and formation. In Harper County, Oklahoma, the field party from the University recovered a large number of fragments of a large Testudo. Although this specimen is as yet unprepared, enough fragments have been pieced together to reveal that the tibia is 127 mm. long. This dimension and those of some of the fragments indicate that the animal may have been four to five feet long.

Mrs. Bernita Mansfield of the Geology Department, University of Kansas, prepared the plate.

[Pg 275]

LITERATURE CITED

Bergounioux, Frederic-Marie.

Chaney, R. W., and Elias, M. K.

Frye, J. C., and Hibbard, C. W.

Hay, O. P.

    Transmitted March 1, 1948.

[Pg 276]

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