A fossil sea turtle from Colombia that is at least 120 million years old is the world’s oldest, scientists have determined.
The almost completely preserved skeleton from the Cretaceous period, with a length of nearly two metres, shows all of the characteristic traits of modern marine turtles.
“Santanachelys gaffneyi is the oldest known sea turtle” — this sentence from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is no longer up to date.
“We described a fossil sea turtle from Colombia that is about 25 million years older,” said Edwin Cadena from Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany.
