Fossil Friday - softshell turtle

Turtles have a long and amazing fossil record, appearing around 260 million years ago, even before the earliest-known dinosaurs. By the latter most part of the age of dinosaurs, the Late Cretaceous Epoch, most of the modern turtle groups had evolved. Their fossils are extremely common in rocks that represent both freshwater and marine environments.Today's Fossil Friday is a piece of turtle shell that was collected by my colleagues and I in 2017 in the Menefee Formation of New Mexico. The shallow pits covering the surface suggest that it belongs to a trionychid - a softshell turtle, much like those that still live in North America today. This 80-million-year-old turtle was found at a diverse fossil site that also produced dinosaur bones, crocodile teeth, and large fish scales. These fossils were deposited in a freshwater environment, on a muddy floodplain near a slow-moving river.This is one of many turtle fossils discovered in the Menefee Formation by the Western Science Center, Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences, and Southwest Paleontological Society. We will have much more to say about them in the not too distant future! Post by Curator Dr. Andrew McDonald