Adorable, 5" Inflated Fossil Tortoise (Stylemys) - South Dakota

Adorable, Inflated Fossil Tortoise (Stylemys) - South Dakota #373011

This is a relatively small, 5" long shell (carapace and plastron) of an Oligocene-aged tortoise (Stylemys nebrascensis) from the White River Formation in the Badlands of South Dakota. Beautiful mottled red and brown coloration on this adorable specimen.

It comes with an acrylic display stand.

While compression is pretty minimal on this specimen, there is some fracturing of the carapace that required minor gap fill and restoration within cracks. Some restoration of the anterior and posterior edge scutes can be seen, with most of the restoration along the posterior edge. The anterior and posterior ends of the plastron have also been restored. Total restoration on this specimen is somewhere around 5-7%.

Stylemys ("pillar turtle") is the first fossil genus of dry land tortoise discovered in the United States. They lived in temperate to subtropical areas of North America, Europe, and Asia.

These extinct tortoises had primitive jaw muscles, unlike today's tortoises that also display the os transiliens bone, and would have been herbivorous. While Stylemys species did exhibit the same neck structure as modern tortoises, the forelimbs weren't ideal for burrowing.

SPECIES

Stylemys nebrascensis

AGE

Oligocene (30 - 33 Million Years)