First Turtle Remains from the Middle-Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota, NE China

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Lu Li
Jialiang Zhang
Xiaolin Wang
Yuan Wang
Haiyan Tong

Abstract

The Middle-Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota, preceding the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota in NE China has yielded a rich collection of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate fossils. But contrary to the Jehol Biota which is rich in freshwater vertebrates, in the Yanliao Biota the aquatic reptiles are absent, and turtles have not been reported so far. In this paper, we report on the first turtle remains from the Yanliao Biota. The material consists of a partial skeleton from the Upper Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of Bawanggou site (Qinglong, Hebei Province, China). Characterized by a broad skull with a pair of sulci carotici and a remnant of an interpterygoid vacuity, a well-developed anterior lobe of the plastron with mesiolaterally elongated epiplastra and a relatively large oval entoplastron; it is assigned to Annemys sp. (Xinjiangchelyidae). This discovery adds a new element to the poorly known freshwater vertebrate fauna of the Yanliao Biota and extends the geographical distribution of Annemys to NE China.

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