Meiolania
| Meiolania | ||||||||||||
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Meiolania fossil in the American Museum of Natural History |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Middle Miocene to Holocene | ||||||||||||
| 12 million years to 3,000 years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Meiolania | ||||||||||||
| Owen , 1886 | ||||||||||||
Meiolania ( Greek for "little wanderer") is an extinct genus from the suborder of the Halsberger tortoise (Cryptodira). There are four known species that existed from the Middle Miocene to the Holocene .
Features and distribution
Meiolania had an unusually shaped skull with many knob-like and horn-like appendages. Including the two lateral horn cones, the head had a total width of up to 60 cm. These appendages probably prevented the animals from being able to retract their heads completely into the shell. The tail was protected by armored rings and had thorn-like prongs on the end. Meiolania tortoises were very large. With a length of 2.50 m they were the second largest known tortoises, only surpassed by Colossochelys atlas , which occurred in Asia up to the Pleistocene.
Fossil finds are known from Australia, Lord Howe Island , New Caledonia and Vanuatu . However, the species from Lord Howe Island and New Caledonia were much smaller.
Turtle bones discovered in the Fiji Islands are believed to also belong to this genus.
Way of life
Meiolania tortoises were herbivores. When fossil remains were found near beaches in 1925, an aquatic way of life was assumed. Today it is known that they lived terrestrially.
Discovery story
The genus Meiolania was established by Richard Owen in 1886 , based on fossil finds from Lord Howe Island. Owen gave the names Meiolania platyceps and Meiolania minor (today a synonym of Meiolania platyceps ). They were the first well-preserved fossils of the Meiolaniidae family . They showed that the first known remains of a related species from Queensland, now known as Ninjemys oweni and assigned to the genus Meiolania until 1992 , does not belong to the lizards, but to the turtles. In 1901 Arthur Smith Woodward classified the South American species Niolamia argentina in the genus Meiolania , which, however, was not accepted by later authors.
The remains of the second species, Meiolania mackayi , were found on Walpole in the Loyalty Islands and described in 1925 by Charles Anderson , former director of the Australian Museum . It was smaller and less robust than Meiolania platyceps . Fossil finds of this type are also known from the Pindai Caves on Grande Terre , New Caledonia , and from Pulau Tiga .
Meiolania brevicollis was described in 1992 by paleontologist Dirk Megirian . The remains come from the Camfield Beds in the Northern Territory . The species lived in the middle Miocene . The skull and other horn proportions were flatter than those of Meiolania platyceps .
In 2010 Arthur W. White, Trevor H. Worthy , Stuart Hawkins, Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs described the fourth species Meiolania damelipi from the island of Efate, which belongs to Vanuatu . The remains date from the Lapita culture in the Holocene .
die out
It is believed that Meiolania damelipi was hunted to extinction 3000 years ago by the Lapita people. This assumption is supported by the presence of turtle bones in garbage pits at the Teouma archaeological site on Efate. The remains were mostly leg bones, which suggests that the turtles were slaughtered somewhere. The bones are not present in younger layers, suggesting that Meiolania became extinct about 300 years after first contact with humans.
Individual evidence
- ^ Douglas Palmer: The Marshall illustrated encyclopedia of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. A comprehensive, color guide to over 500 species. Marshall Publishing, London 1999, ISBN 1-84028-152-9 , p. 67.
- ^ Richard Owen: Description of Fossil Remains of Two Species of a Megalanian Genus (Meiolania, Ow.), From Lord Howe's Island. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Vol. 40, 1886, pp. 315-316, doi : 10.1098 / rspl.1886.0040 .
- ^ Arthur Smith Woodward: Note on the extinct reptilian genera Megalania Owen and Meiolania Owen. In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Zoology, Botany, and Geology being a Continuation of the Annals combined with Loudon and Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History. 6th Series, Vol. 1, 1888, ZDB -ID 280102-4 , pp. 85-89, digitized .
- ^ Charles Anderson: Notes on the extinct Chelonian Meiolania, with a record of a new occurrence. In: Records of the Australian Museum. Vol. 14, No. 4, ISSN 0081-2676 , 1925, pp. 223-242, doi : 10.3853 / j.0067-1975.14.1925.844 .
- ↑ a b c d e Arthur W. White, Trevor H. Worthy, Stuart Hawkins, Stuart Bedford, Matthew Spriggs: Megafaunal meiolaniid horned turtles survived until early human settlement in Vanuatu, Southwest Pacific. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . Vol. 107, No. 35, 2010, pp. 15512-15516, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1005780107 .
- ↑ a b c Brandon Keim: Extinct, King Koopa-Style Giant Turtle Found on Pacific Island . In: Wired . 17th August 2010.
- ↑ Dirk Megirian: Meiolania brevicollis sp. nov. (Testudines: Meiolaniidae): a new horned turtle from the Australian Miocene. In: Alcheringa. To Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. Vol. 16, No. 2, 1992, ISSN 0311-5518 , pp. 93-106, doi : 10.1080 / 03115519208619035 .
