A 'Stone' from Fishing Trip Turns Out to Be a 32-Million-Year-Old Living Fossil

A family fishing trip in Alabama led to the discovery of a new species of ancient leatherback turtle. A stone found in 2021 turned out to be a 32-million-year-old fossil. Scientists named the species Ueloca colemanorum. The find is unique due to the excellent preservation of the shell, which usually disintegrates. The study was published in the journal Palaeodiversity.

A family fishing trip in Alabama (USA) led to a paleontological sensation. A stone that caught the Coleman family's attention on a riverbank in 2021 turned out to be a unique fossil—an almost intact shell of a leatherback turtle from the early Oligocene epoch. Daily Galaxy reports this. It took scientists several years to extract the object from the limestone boulder and conduct analyses. The results, published in the journal Palaeodiversity, confirmed that the find is about 32 million years old. The fossilized shell measures about 1.2 meters in length and nearly a meter in width. Paleontologists emphasize that finding a leatherback turtle in such condition is a colossal stroke of luck, as their shells consist of thousands of small bone plates that quickly disintegrate after the animal's death. During laboratory cleaning, it turned out that they were dealing with a representative of a previously unknown genus and species, named Ueloca colemanorum. The first part of the name comes from the Muskogee language ("water turtle"), and the second part honors the Coleman family. Comparison with other fossils established that in ancient times there were at least two parallel evolutionary lines of leatherback turtles: one led to modern ocean dwellers, the other went extinct. The find will help restore lost links in the history of these ancient reptiles.