New 🐢 paper alert 🚨🚨 and this is a special one! We describe a stereogenyini turtle (a nearshore pleurodiran lineage) from Syria, Syriemys lelunensis. This is the first vertebrate species named after a fossil discovered in the country, so very cool stuff! You can check the paper here: t.co/LdWpNlHzz0

🚨🚨Alerta de bolsa de doutorado!🚨🚨
Você gosta de 🐢? Ou de evolução e paleontologia? Ofereço bolsa (3 anos) de doutorado em neuroanatomia de 🐢 em Tübingen, Alemanha, dá uma olhadinha: www.senckenberg.de/en/career/sc...

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🚨🚨PhD position alert!🚨🚨
Do you like 🐢🐢? Or ecomorph evolution? I am offering a 36-month PhD position funded by the DFG about ecomorphology and neuroanatomy of turtles. Check out the ad here: www.senckenberg.de/en/career/sc...

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New 🐢 paper alert! In this one led by the now PhD student Donato Martucci we finally described the fossils of matamata from the Miocene of the Brazilian Amazon Basin and reviewed the status of the extinct species of the genus Chelus.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

spent this whole week in Fribourg trying to run some diversification analyses of turtles, but 🐢 seem not to care to anything (our frustration faces clearly show that)

so here is the catch: the sutured pelves in Proterochersis could be related to improved swimming & we also found their shell shape to be more similar to those of aquatic than terrestrial 🐢! So, our study suggests that at least one of the earliest 🐢 could have been a swimmer and not a land species

we found out that suturing the pelvic girdle in Proterochersis and the modern side-necked turtles (pleurodires) does not improve the strength of their shells. Actually, in pleurodires it has been shown to improve swimming performance. The Triassic 🐢 were all thought to be terrestrial, though