Shell biomechanics suggests an aquatic palaeoecology at the dawn of turtle evolution

GS Ferreira, G Hermanson, C Kyriakouli, D Dróżdż… - Scientific Reports, 2024 - nature.com
The turtle shell is a remarkable structure that has intrigued not only evolutionary biologists
but also engineering and material scientists because of its multi-scale complexity and …

Cranial and mandibular anatomy of Plastomenus thomasii and a new time-tree of trionychid evolution

SW Evers, KEJ Chapelle, WG Joyce - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, 2023 - Springer
Trionychid (softshell) turtles have a peculiar bauplan, which includes shell reductions and
cranial elongation. Despite a rich fossil record dating back to the Early Cretaceous, the …

The latest freshwater giants: a new Peltocephalus (Pleurodira: Podocnemididae) turtle from the Late Pleistocene of the Brazilian Amazon

GS Ferreira, ER Nascimento, EA Cadena… - Biology …, 2024 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Overkill of large mammals is recognized as a key driver of Pleistocene megafaunal
extinctions in the Americas and Australia. While this phenomenon primarily affected mega …

The role of climate on the emergence of giant caimanines (Crocodylia, Alligatoroidea) from the Miocene western Amazonian region

ALS Paiva, PL Godoy, EM Dunne, A Farnsworth… - Palaeogeography …, 2024 - Elsevier
Extant caimanines include the six modern species of caimans, which occur predominantly in
South and Central America and are mostly medium-sized crocodylians. Nevertheless, the …

Shell Constraints on Evolutionary Body Size–Limb Size Allometry Can Explain Morphological Conservatism in the Turtle Body Plan

G Hermanson, SW Evers - Ecology and Evolution, 2024 - Wiley Online Library
Turtles are a small clade of vertebrates despite having existed since the Late Triassic.
Turtles have a conservative body plan relative to other amniotes, characterized by the …

The two-scale fractal dimension: a unifying perspective to metabolic law

QT Ain, JH He, XL Qiang, Z Kou - Fractals, 2024 - World Scientific
The laws governing life should be as simple as possible; however, theoretical investigations
into allometric laws have become increasingly complex, with the long-standing debate over …

The onset of large size in Cretaceous marine turtles (Protostegidae) evidenced by new fossil remains from the Valanginian of Colombia

EA Cadena, DA Combita-Romero - Zoological Journal of the …, 2023 - academic.oup.com
The evolution of large size in vertebrates is a fascinating research topic, relevant, for
example, for the Cretaceous turtles of the Protostegidae clade, which includes some of the …

New insights into the early morphological evolution of sea turtles by re-investigation of Nichollsemys baieri, a three-dimensionally preserved fossil stem chelonioid …

JCL Menon, DB Brinkman, G Hermanson… - Swiss Journal of …, 2024 - Springer
The early evolution of Pan-Chelonioidea (sea turtles) is poorly understood. This is in part
due to the rarity of undeformed skulls of definitive early stem chelonioids. In this work, we …

Simple shell measurements do not consistently predict habitat in turtles: a reply to Lichtig and Lucas (2017)

SW Evers, C Foth, WG Joyce… - Peer Community …, 2025 - peercommunityjournal.org
Inferring palaeoecology for fossils is a key interest of palaeobiology. For groups with extant
representatives, correlations of aspects of body shape with ecology can provide important …

Cladistic estimates of evolutionary rates focused on palaeontological datasets using TNT

D Pol, MD Ezcurra - Cladistics, 2025 - Wiley Online Library
We describe a protocol for estimating evolutionary rates from phylogenetic trees based on
parsimony character optimization. The rate estimation is conducted through a TNT script and …