The blue planet is comprised of millions and billions of species of both flora and fauna sustained according to their natural habitats. But such great diversity has been even richer in the past. Giant Tortoise Many of the rarest species have now being extinct.
During the time immemorial and the period when man didn’t exactly attain the intellect to develop, many giant animal species lived on earth. It was only the apt habitat and spae that made them live on earth for so long. But sooner the development and modernization started which completely eradicated the suitable habitat for giant animal species.
One such species is the Stupendemys geographics, one of the biggest tortoise species which we would learn about in this blog in detail.
About Stupendemys geographicus Giant Tortoise.
Stupendemys geographicus Giant Tortoise is the name of an extinct side-necked turtle species that mainly lived in freshwater habitat. This species belonged to the family of Podocnemididae. Being the giant turtle species ever known to exist with freshwater as a habitat, these creatures were known to have a carapace of over 2 meters in length. The fossils of the geographicus turtle have recently been collected from the southernmost region of America alongside the rock bed. These rocks are observed to be dating from the Middle Miocene to the initial part of the Pliocene nearly thirteen million years ago.
Physical appearance.
Apart from their giant bodily structures, Stupendemys geographicus Giant Tortoise had some differences in internal and external attributes among male and female organisms. The male geographicus possessed small horns rising from the frontmost part of the edges of their shell. Furthermore, the discovery of a fossil of a young giant turtle indicated that they had flattened carapaces according to their age. Another inference made from a 2021 study was that these turtles were the generalist feeder.
Historical aspects.
The species was initially named in 1976 by Sir Roger C. Wood as Stupendemys geographicus Giant Tortoise which was based on the specimen MCNC-244 (the middle portion of a giant-sized carapace with a linked femur at the left area. The first discovery of its fossils was accomplished by a paleontological excavation at the Harvard University in Venezuela in 1972. From Venezuela itself, the fossils of the lower jaw were found that were used to lump up the Caninemys into Stupendemys in a study for the year 2020.
Nomenclature of the species.
The naming of this giant turtle has a long history. The name Stupendemys geographicus Giant Tortoise is made up of the combination of “stupendous” which means “impressive” whereas the Latin word “emys” means the freshwater turtle. After its initial naming, the name was recorrected in the year by the National geographic society in 2021 in consideration of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature(ICZN).
