In 1896, a paleontologist working on fossils from South Dakota described a spectacular
new discovery.
It was a giant sea turtle - the biggest fossil turtle ever described.
It lived between 83 million and 72 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous Period,
when the interior of North America was covered by a huge sea.
And, at around 4.5 meters long and weighing more than two metric tons, Archelon -- as
it’s known -- was more than twice the size of the largest sea turtle today - the leatherback.
Like the leatherback, Archelon didn’t have a hard upper shell, or carapace.
Instead, it just had a framework of ribs covered by rubbery, flexible skin.
But, here’s the thing: Archelon wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles...or
any other living sea turtles.
In fact, Archelon didn’t even make it out of the Cretaceous.
But, as the Cenozoic Era started, a completely different group of sea turtles was ready to
take over the world’s oceans -- the true leatherbacks.
And they would share a lot of the same adaptations that the ancient giant had.
Why?
Well, it looks like there are some things about being a giant, skin-shelled sea turtle
that just work, no matter where, or when, you lived.
We can start our story of the sea turtle back in the Cretaceous Period, about 120 million
years ago, when the first true marine turtles appeared.
The planet was really active tectonically back then, as the supercontinent Gondwana
was breaking up.
As new, smaller continents formed, lots of new coastlines appeared, creating plenty of
sea turtle habitat.
Taking advantage of these new marine habitats, turtles may have transitioned from land to
sea multiple times in different parts of the world.
One of these transitions included the group of sea turtles that Archelon belonged to - the
protostegids - whose fossils have been found in Europe, Australia, and South America.
And some of the earliest protostegids had bodies like Archelon’s: big, with lightweight
shells, which may have let them travel long distances and spread out around the world.
Their large bodies might also have helped them maintain a more stable body temperature
than most other reptiles - a phenomenon called gigantothermy.
Basically, being big means your body has more volume relative to surface area, so you lose
less heat to the environment.
And big changes were in the works that would give these turtles a bit of a boost.
Right in the middle of the Cretaceous, the climate warmed and sea levels rose, creating even
more sea turtle habitat.
By this time, North America was literally split down the middle, from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Arctic Ocean, by a body of water known as the Western Interior Seaway.
And this warm, kinda brackish water turned out to be a great place for sea turtles, hosting
an explosion of their diversity - including some of the giants.
Like, another huge cousin of Archelon: Protostega gigas
It was smaller than Archelon, but not by much - it was still more than 3 meters long.
It had a shell made of tough skin over strut-like ribs, like the leatherback.
And it was more widespread.
But then, well, you know how the world is: Change is the only constant!
So, in the Late Cretaceous, the climate cooled again, which made sea levels drop.
This, combined with the geological uplift of the Great Plains, meant that by 70 million
years ago, the Western Interior Seaway had disappeared, its water now frozen in the poles.
Most of the North American sea turtles went extinct, disappearing from the fossil record.
Both Archelon and its cousin Protostega were gone before the Cretaceous Period even ended.
And that was the end of that first group of giant, skin-shelled turtles -- the protostegids.
But a new, separate lineage was gaining a foothold -- or, a flipper...hold?
-- anyway, this one would eventually lead to the leatherback.
These marine reptiles, a superfamily known as the Chelonioidea, may have first appeared
during that explosion of sea turtle diversity in the late Cretaceous.
And this is the group that living sea turtles belong to.
Which means, somehow, some of them made it through one of the world’s biggest changes:
the End-Cretaceous mass extinction 66 million years ago.
For example, fossils of a North American sea turtle called Euclastes show that it was around
both before and after the extinction event.
It had a nearly complete bony shell, and it looks to be related to today’s hard-shelled
sea turtles.
As for the leatherbacks, the family they belong to is called Dermochelyidae, which literally
means “skin shells.”
And this family likely split off from the harder-shelled ancestors of other living sea
turtles around the Late Cretaceous, soon after the superfamily Chelonioidea appeared.
Now, we’re still not sure where geographically the leatherback’s family came about.
But there’s some genetic evidence that it originated in the Indo-Pacific region.
And we do know that these new skin-shelled turtles totally took off after the End Cretaceous
extinction.
I mean, as fast as turtles can ...you know… take off.
Just like the protostegids did 50 million years earlier, this group diversified and
spread around the world, their fossils found in deposits from Japan to the UK.
And this worldwide expansion of the leatherback’s family showed how successful their body plan
-- that is, big, and with a skin-covered shell -- can be, in the right conditions.
And over time, that body plan gradually became even more specialized, with a new adaptation:
bits of bone embedded in the leathery shell called ossicles.
Ossicles first show up in a turtle from Saudi Arabia around 56 million years ago called
Arabemys.
Then, other species with ossicles kept popping up all over - from Africa to New Zealand,
and even Antarctica.
Ossicles may provide some degree of protection, but some researchers think they might also
play a role in calcium regulation.
Modern turtles release calcium from their shells to keep their bloodstreams from getting
too acidic.
And we do know that, over time, these ossicles became thinner and lighter, which helped make
these turtles more buoyant.
And it’s possible that other factors could’ve shaped the evolution of the ossicles, too.
In any event, they were part of the specialized body plan that made long migrations possible.
But, the early success of the leatherback’s family wouldn’t last long.
Only three species of these skin-shelled turtles are found in the Oligocene Epoch, two in the
Miocene, and just one in the Pliocene.
So what happened to them?
Well, it was probably another change in climate.
Between about 45 million and 23 million years ago, the climate got a lot cooler and drier,
making the world much less favorable for sea turtles.
And today, the leatherback is the only skin-shelled sea turtle left.
Like Arabemys and later skin-shells, it has hundreds of ossicles in its shell.
And, maybe thanks to its light-weight shell, it has one of longest recorded migrations
of any vertebrate animal.
Plus, as a gigantotherm, the leatherback’s size, coupled with an extra layer of insulating
brown fat, keeps its body temperature stable, even while migrating from its tropical breeding
grounds to subpolar areas where it forages.
And, the leatherback’s suite of adaptations, including its thick, oily skin, allow it to
dive more than 1200-meters.
Today’s leatherback is the last member of its family and the only surviving part of
that second great radiation of skin-shelled sea turtles.
And while it isn’t related to Archelon and the protostegids, it does resemble them in
a lot of important ways -- yet another reminder that body plans that just work, like being
a huge skin-shelled turtle, can show up in the history of life again and again.
We’d like to give a special thanks to Dr. George R. Zug at the Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History for his help with this episode.
And if you found yourself thinking - where did turtles even come from?
Then be sure to check out our episode called, “How the Turtle Got Its Shell” for more info
on nature’s home on legs.
And big thanks to this month’s turtally awesome Eontologists.....Sean Dennis, Jake Hart, Annie
& Eric Higgins, John Davison Ng, and Patrick Seifert!
You can become an Eonite at patreon.com/eons and get fun perks like behind the scenes content
and submitting a joke for us to read,
like this one, which I’ve been told to prepare myself for.
This is from Matt Jenkins
A Dinosaur was helping her friend pick an outfit.
Her advice was: "Try Sarah's Tops?"
Let’s never speak of that again.
And as always thanks for joining me in the Konstantin Haase studio.
Subscribe at youtube.com/eons for more fantastic fossils.