Kinosternon flavescens
The yellow mud turtle, also commonly known as the yellow-necked mud turtle, is a species of mud turtle in the family Kinosternidae. The species is endemic to the Central United States and Mexico.

Uncredited · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Yellow mud turtlePBDB
- Sits inside
- KinosternonPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Cryptodira
Time the record covers
At least 3.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 4.7 Mya to 1.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 9.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.
8 occurrences of Kinosternon flavescens on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
8 occurrences- Miocene11%
- Pliocene42%
- Pleistocene47%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
2 formations
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The named rock units Kinosternon flavescens has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Kinosternon flavescens and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Kinosternon flavescens and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
187 taxa- Thamnophis5 sites
- Bufo3 sites
- Gigantocamelus spatulus3 sites
- Sceloporus undulatus3 sites
- Baiomys2 sites
- Borophagus diversidens2 sites
- Buisnictis schoffi2 sites
- Canis lepophagus2 sites
- Colubrinae2 sites
- Crotalus2 sites
- Elaphe obsoleta2 sites
- Eumeces2 sites
- Geochelone2 sites
- Heterodon2 sites
- Lampropeltis getulus2 sites
- Lampropeltis triangulum2 sites
- Leporidae2 sites
- Mimomys (Ogmodontomys) poaphagus2 sites
- Neotoma (Paraneotoma) quadriplicata2 sites
- Neotoma (Paraneotoma) sawrockensis2 sites
- Nerodia2 sites
- Paenemarmota sawrockensis2 sites
- Paracryptotis2 sites
- Platygonus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Kinosternon flavescens, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- Geographical distribution and osteological variation in fossil and Recent specimens of two species of Kinosternon (Testudines)3
- Turtles from the Late Pleistocene of Hidalgo and Puebla and their paleobiogeographic and paleoclimatic significance1
- Turtles from the late Hemphillian (latest Miocene) of Knox County, Nebraska1
- Fossil herpetofauna of the Lisco C Quarries (Pliocene: early Blancan) of Nebraska1
- A mid-Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) herpetofauna from a cave in southcentral Texas1
- Repenning and May, 19861
Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Kinosternon flavescens
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Kinosternon flavescens · MVZ:Herp:MVZ:Herp:244070
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itKinosternon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Agassiz 1857)