Lepidochelys
Ridley sea turtles are a genus (Lepidochelys) of sea turtle comprising two species: Kemp's ridley sea turtle and the olive ridley sea turtle.

Uncredited · Public Domain · 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
- Ridley sea turtlePBDB
- Sits inside
- CheloniidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Chelonioidea
Time the record covers
At least 1.9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
5 occurrences of Lepidochelys on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
5 occurrencesThese 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
5 formations
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Peace River Formation · Hawthorn Group1
- Bone Valley Formation1
- St. Marys Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Chagres Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lepidochelys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lepidochelys and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lepidochelys and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
487 taxa- Chelonia2 sites
- Isistius2 sites
- Kogiidae2 sites
- Neohipparion eurystyle2 sites
- Ninoziphius platyrostris2 sites
- Ontocetus emmonsi2 sites
- Phocidae2 sites
- Squalus2 sites
- <Brotulid>1 site
- Acanthocybium solandri1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Acipenser oxyrhynchus1 site
- Actinocythereis1 site
- Actinocythereis captionis1 site
- Acuticythereis1 site
- Aethiinae1 site
- Aetobatus1 site
- Agonidae1 site
- Alca1 site
- Alca ausonia1 site
- Alca carolinensis1 site
- Alca minor1 site
- Alca olsoni1 site
- Alca torda1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Lepidochelys, 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
4 references- Fossil sea turtles from the early Pliocene Bone Valley Formation, central Florida2
- An Upper Miocene marine turtle from Panama that preserves osteocytes with potential DNA1
- Miocene and Pliocene Chelonians from the Calvert Cliffs and Nearby Regions1
- Turtles of the Lee Creek Mine (Pliocene: North Carolina)1
Each of the 5 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 Lepidochelys
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itCheloniidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fitzinger 1843