Notochelone

Notochelone is an extinct genus of sea turtle, which existed about 100 million years ago. The species was first described by Richard Owen in 1882 as Notochelys costata. It was renamed by Richard Lydekker in 1889. It was the most common marine reptile living in the inlands of the sea around Queensland, Australia. It was small turtle with carapace less than 1 metre (3.3 ft). Analytical studies have indicated that the creatures frequently ate benthic molluscs.

Notochelone

Stephen F. Poropat, Phil R. Bell, Lachlan J. Hart, Steven W. Salisbury, & Benjamin P. Kear · CC BY 4.0 · 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
Sits inside
ProtostegidaePBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
Life habit
aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Chelonioidea

Time the record covers

At most 5.8 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 100.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 6 of 6 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 6 occurrences106–106 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106–106 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106–106 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106–105 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105–104 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences104–103 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences103–102 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences102–101 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences101–100 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106.8 Mya100 Mya

6 occurrences of Notochelone on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

6 occurrences

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

1 formation

Toolebuc — 22.92°S, 140.58°EToolebuc — 20.06°S, 141.20°EToolebuc — 20.84°S, 143.60°EToolebuc — 20.63°S, 143.04°EToolebuc — 22.89°S, 139.86°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Notochelone has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Notochelone and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Notochelone and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

16 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Notochelone, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

3 references

Each of the 6 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 content1

Picture of Notochelone

Credit
Stephen F. Poropat, Phil R. Bell, Lachlan J. Hart, Steven W. Salisbury, & Benjamin P. Kear
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Notochelone was found in Sketchfab.

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 itProtostegidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lydekker 1889