The first Paleogene (Oligocene) sea turtle record of South America
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Marine Biology, Paleontology, Zoology
- Keywords
- Montañita/Olón, Pan-Chelonioidea, Ecuador, Testudines
- Copyright
- © 2018 Cadena et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. The first Paleogene (Oligocene) sea turtle record of South America. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26532v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26532v1
Abstract
The evolution and occurrence of fossil sea turtles at the Pacific margin of South America is poorly known and restricted to Neogene (Miocene) findings from Perú. Here we report and describe the first record of Paleogene (Late Oligocene, ~24 Ma) sea turtle remains. The fossil material corresponds to a single, isolated and well-preserved costal bone found at the Montañita/Olón locality, Santa Elena Province, Ecuador. Comparisons with other Oligocene and extant representatives allow us to confirm that belong to a sea turtle characterized by: lack of lateral ossification, allowing the dorsal exposure of the distal end of ribs; dorsal surface of bone sculptured, changing from dense vermiculation at the vertebral scute region and changing to anastomosing pattern of grooves at the most lateral portion of the costal. This fossil finding shows the high potential that the Ecuadorian Paleogene outcrops have in order to explore the evolution and paleobiogeography distribution of sea turtles by the time that the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans were connected via the Panama basin.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.