Evolution Of Turtle Essay

Evolution of Turtles and Their Body Plan Turtles are one of the most unique animals that roam the Earth today. They have the most unique body plans any animal has ever had. Being one of the oldest reptiles, from the order Testudines, they have gone through millions of years of adaption and evolution. Their evolution have left biologist puzzled and has demanded the attention of zoologist to study and discover the adaptation of these fascinating creatures. With the recent discoveries of Eunotosaurus africanus and Pappochelys Rosinae, biologist can finally piece together the missing links to help finally solve how turtles became the wqay they are today. The discovery of their evolution and the altercation of the Turtle and their Bauplan is astounding.

E. Africanus was roaming the earth between 265.8 and 251 million years ago in the late-Permian era in modern-day South Africa. Hailing from the genus Eunotosaurus, the E. Africanus, so far, is the earliest and the most similar to (at the time) the modern day turtle. Eunotosaurus was given its named in 1892, but it was not proposed to be an ancestor of Chelonia, (the turtle order), until 1914. English zoologist D. M. S. Watson claimed that Eunotosaurus was “transitional between Cotylosaurs and Chelonia”. Watson also compared it to "Archichelone", a name he hypothesized for a debatable chelonian ancestor. He noted that “its ribs appeared to be between the ribs of a turtles’ and ribs of other tetrapods”. Watson's "Archichelone" had a pelvic girdle that was placed under the shell, and was also pushed back on the vertebral column. However, fossil evidence showed that the pelvis is in the normal position it would be in other tetrapods and is, in fact, not placed within the ribs, but over them, just like modern turtles. There have been many other debates about whether or not Eunotosaurus is even remotely closely related to modern day turtles and all the evidence of its body plan have proven doubters