Scientists reunite turtle fossils found at least 160 years apart

An amateur paleontologist discovered part of a limb bone of a huge sea turtle that lived some 70 million years ago. The other part of the same bone was first described in 1849.

|
Jason Poole, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
Based on the complete turtle limb bone, paleontologists calculated the animal’s overall size to be about 10 feet from tip to tail, making it one of the largest sea turtles ever known. It may have resembled modern loggerhead turtles. In this illustration, it is depicted with the outline of a human diver to indicate scale. The turtle lived 70 to 75 million years ago.

When amateur paleontologist Gregory Harpel stumbled upon what he assumed to be a "rock at first", little did he know that he had actually discovered the missing piece of a fossil puzzle that had intrigued paleontologists since 1849. 

The bone spotted by 54-year-old Harpel, whose weekend hobby is to search for fossil shark teeth, on a streambed in Monmouth County, N.J. was part of a humerus – the large upper "arm" bone of an ancient sea turtle. The bone was in good condition but broken at the midshaft.

At the time, Mr. Harpel didn't know that the rest of the turtle's humerus was sitting in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia. 

Nobody knows exactly how Drexel originally acquired the fossil counterpart to Harpel's discovery. "Unfortunately, things were not as well documented in those days," Ted Daeschler, associate curator of vertebrate zoology at the academy LiveScience.

The first scientific description of the old bone dates back to 1849 and was described by the famed naturalist Louis Agassiz as "the first, or type specimen, of its genus and species, Atlantochelys mortoni," according to a Drexel press release.

After Harpel found the piece in 2012, it did not take long for him to realize that the "rock" he was looking at is actually a significant fossil.

"Initially, I thought it was just a stream rock," Harpel told International Business Times. "The more I looked at it, it had a definitive shape to it."

Harpel showed the fossil to Jason Schein, assistant curator of natural history at the New Jersey State Museum and David Parris, the museum’s curator of natural history, who immediately recognized that the fossil was indeed a bone of a sea turtle.

The piece looked familiar to Parris.

"He said offhandedly, 'Maybe we ought to take it to the Academy [of Natural Sciences] and see if it fits," Mr. Schein told LiveScience reporter Wynne Parry, "Dave was half joking, thinking that could never, ever happen."

Why so? Because fossils when exposed to elements of weather will eventually break apart within a few months to a few years, says Dr. Daeschler. 

Nevertheless, the piece was brought to Drexel for further examination.

"As soon as those two halves came together, like puzzle pieces, you knew it,” Daeschler says. "It was amazing." 

Everything from the bones' color to the shape of break indicated that the two fossils were halves of the same bone.

Based on the overall size of the bones, scientists estimate that the sea turtle, which lived during the Cretaceous Period some 70 million to 75 million years ago, was about 10 feet from tip to tail, making it one of the largest known sea turtles ever. 

The discovery challenges the conventional wisdom among scientists, who now believe that exposed fossils can survive for durations longer than what was previously thought.

“The astounding confluence of events that had to have happened for this to be true is just unbelievable, and probably completely unprecedented in paleontology,” said Schein in the press release. 

They findings of the study will be published in 2014 issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Scientists reunite turtle fossils found at least 160 years apart
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0325/Scientists-reunite-turtle-fossils-found-at-least-160-years-apart
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe