![]() ![]() padillai, while others evolved independently to become the modern turtles that live in the sea today. ![]() The researchers think it's likely that turtles did the same, and evolved several times with different descendants to live in the sea. However, it shouldn't be an altogether surprising theory, he added, because mammals, reptiles and other animals evolved separately several times to produce a variety of sea-dwelling animals.įor instance, mammals advanced many times to become sea creatures like dolphins and seals, and they came from different ancestors. Parham said there has been some resistance to this idea from other scientists. Rather, it might have evolved to live in the sea, and then other turtles later evolved in the same way from a separate ancestor, they said. padillai is so old but doesn't look primitive, it might not be related to modern sea turtles. The finding also suggests that turtles could have evolved to become sea dwellers more than once throughout history, the researchers said. This suggests there could be older sea turtles still to be found (if they are preserved), the scientists said. Though the specimen is at least 120 million years old, the turtle doesn't look like an ancient species that was early on in its evolution, and instead is "very specialized," he added. "The cool thing about this turtle is that it's really old, but it's not very primitive," Parham told Live Science. However, it wasn't until Edwin Cadena, a researcher at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Germany, and James Parham, an assistant professor of geological sciences at California State University, Fullerton, inspected it that the fossil was determined to be the oldest sea turtle specimen in the world, dating back to the Cretaceous period, between 145.5 million and 65.5 million years ago. padillai specimen was dug up by hobby paleontologist Mary Luz Parra and her two brothers in 2007. The now-extinct Desmatochelys padillai turtle skeleton was found in Villa de Leyva, Colombia, and is 25 million years older than the Santanachelys gaffneyi turtle from Brazil that previously held the record for the world's oldest sea turtle fossil. The world's oldest sea turtle fossil shows the ancient animal swam the oceans at least 120 million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, according to a recent analysis. ![]()
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