The partial skeleton of Desmatochelys padillai, with a length of almost 6.5 feet (2 m), shows all of the characteristic traits of modern marine turtles, the paleontologists report online today in the journal PaleoBios. The article reports that the very old fossil sea turtles, whose scientific name is Desmatochleys padillai, from South America represent the oldest confirmed record of sea turtles anywhere in the world.

A team of researchers at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt examined the completely preserved skeleton of a 120-million-year-old reptile, making it 25 million years older than the previously known oldest specimen. “During the Cretaceous period, they split into land and sea dwellers”, Dr Cadena said.

Until now the oldest known turtle specimen was Santanachelys gaffneyi, which was discovered in Brazil in 2008.

Experts hold that sea turtles may have evolved from freshwater and terrestrial turtles that existed about 230 million years ago. Because fossil evidence from this time period is rare, this discovery made by Cadena and his colleague J. Parham, from California State University, Fullerton, is quite unusual, the release noted. Researchers have dated the fossils back to the Cretaceous period based on the turtles’ physical characteristics and the sediment in which the fossils were discovered.

Shells and bones of the fossilized turtle were originally found in two sites near Villa de Leyva in Colombia. Since then, they have been stored in the collections of the “Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas” in Villa Leyva and the “University of California Museum of Paleontology”. “This lends a particular significance to each fossil discovery that may contribute to clarifying the phylogeny of the”, explains the turtle professional from Columbia.

For example, the sediments in which the remains were found and the morphology of the animal are key pointers to the fact that the fossil is the oldest that man has ever known with regards to sea turtles.