Newly discovered: Fossil giant turtle named after Stephen King novel character

Visualization of the new discovered giant turtle Peltocephalus maturin An international research team led by Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of has described a new species of giant turtle from the late Pleistocene. Peltocephalus maturin is between 40,000 and 9,000 years old and comes from the Brazilian Amazon. With a shell length of around 180 centimeters, the species is one of the largest known freshwater turtles in the world. The armored reptile was named after the giant turtle "Maturin", a fictional character by best-selling author Stephen King. With a maximum shell length of 140 centimeters, the Asian narrow-headed softshell turtle ( Chitra chitra ) together with the approximately 110-centimeter-long South American river turtle ( Podocnemis expansa ) is one of the largest freshwater turtles alive today. "In the past, we only know of a few turtles living in fresh waters that had a shell length of more than 150 centimeters," explains Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of and continues: "Such large animals are most recently known primarily from the Miocene, the period around 23 to five million years ago." - First author Gabriel S. Ferreira ( right ) taking samples for the geochemical analyses - Ferreira and an international team have now discovered a giant representative of this order of reptiles from the end of the Pleistocene period, around 40,000 to 9,000 years ago, and described it as a new species.