Prehistoric Turtle Big Enough to Eat Crocodiles Discovered

I'm in constant amazement at the size of prehistoric animals. The "Coal Turtle" was nearly the size of a small car with a shell that was about 5 1/2 feet long. What else can you say about a turtle that's big enough to eat you, but...WOW...I can't even imagine what it would be like to have existed during those times and face such creatures.

I have always been an a passionate fossil collector, and spend countless hours searching for new finds. Finding something like this would be a dream come true to me.

planetsave.com...

A prehistoric turtle big enough to eat crocodiles has been discovered in Columbia. The turtle lived about 60 million years ago, and was about the size of a small car.

The fossils were discovered in a coal mine in northern Colombia, in 2005. And the turtle has, thus, been named Carbonemys cofrinii, ‘coal turtle’. The turtle had a skull about the size of a football, and a shell that’s about five and a half feet long.

“We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period — and it gave us the first evidence of giantism in freshwater turtles,” Cadena says.

“It’s like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake,” says Ksepka, co-author of the paper describing the find. “That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though — in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth.”

A few years back I found a snapping turtle in the middle of the road that was over two feet in diameter, and he was one vicious beast. The "Coal Turtle" must have been a formitable enemy for it's prey.

that picture is very....misleading..

reply to post by wlord

in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth

I assume that the picture illustrates a small croc being eaten, but yes, I can agree that the picture could be a little misleading. I just used the picture from the article.

Thanks for pointing that out so noone mistakes the turtle for being 100 feet long or something.

Is that a giant turtle eating a dinosaur or a small turtle eating a tiny lizard... hard to tell...

The Coal Turtle is still half the size of Archelon ischyros at 13 ft long by 16ft wide, flipper to flipper.




Still absolutely amazing how enormous these creatures were, I definitely would NOT want to take a swim with this guy lurking around.


ETA - The above picture of Archelon is from the Museum of Ancient Life - Thanksgiving Point, UT