1.7" Fossil Turtle Skull - Kem Kem Beds, Morocco

This is a rare find from the Late Cretaceous Kem Kem Beds of Morocco; a skull of an unidentified turtle. Because of it was deposited in a fairly high-energy environment you rarely see delicate bone material this intact. The bone preservation is quite nice and while it has been stabilized there is no repair or restoration.

The Kem Kem Group is famous for yielding a diverse Late Cretaceous vertebrate assemblage, including fish, reptiles, and dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus. These fossils are found in a thin bed that outcrops around the edge of a large plateau near Taouz, Morocco. Local miners collect these fossils by digging narrow tunnels by hand into this plateau, following the layer.

A paper on this assemblage can be found at: Vertebrate assemblages from the early Late Cretaceous of southeastern Morocco: An overview

One of the tunnels dug into the Kem Kem beds by local miners following the productive fossil beds.
One of the tunnels dug into the Kem Kem beds by local miners following the productive fossil beds.

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DETAILS
SPECIES
Unidentified
LOCATION
Taouz, Kem Kem Basin, Morocco
FORMATION
Kem Kem Beds
SIZE
1.7" long, 1.75" wide
ITEM
#125297
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