Turtles Have Been Around for More Than 200 Million Years

Some of the oldest known turtle fossils date to about 215 million years ago, showing turtles were already around during the Triassic Period.

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Turtles have an extraordinarily deep fossil history. Fossils discovered in southern Poland include remarkably complete turtle shells and other bones dating to about 215 million years ago, during the Late Triassic. The fossils are among the oldest and most complete turtle remains known and help scientists investigate how the turtle body plan developed. Other ancient turtle fossils show that early members of the group differed substantially from modern turtles, including species with unusual shell structures and, in some cases, teeth. Sea turtles themselves appeared much later, with the oldest known sea turtle fossils dating to roughly 110 million years ago. So the broad turtle lineage is far older than modern sea turtles. The fossil record also shows that saying turtles are unchanged for hundreds of millions of years can be misleading. Their recognizable body form persisted in some respects, but anatomy, genetics, ecology, and individual species changed over evolutionary time. The original claim that a 215 million year old turtle fossil was older than the oldest dinosaur is also misleading. Dinosaurs are known from fossils dating to roughly 230 million years ago, so the turtle fossils are ancient without predating the dinosaur lineage. Today, turtles remain a long-lived branch of reptile evolution, while many living turtle species face serious threats from habitat loss, hunting, capture, pollution, and other human pressures.

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