Oligocene pancheloniid sea turtles from the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

In the Oligocene Ashley and Chandler Bridge formations near Charleston, South Carolina, remains of three species of pancheloniid sea turtle are common. In their relative order of abundance, they are Carolinochelys wilsoni, Ashleychelys palmeri, gen. et sp. nov., and Procolpochelys charlestonensis, sp. nov. Unlike the other two Oligocene South Carolina genera, Procolpochelys persisted into the middle Miocene. An isolated skull, referable to the Miocene species Procolpochelys grandaeva, is described here to supplement description of the poorly known skull of the Oligocene species P. charlestonensis. These turtles, all referable to Pancheloniidae, represent an endemic, moderately advanced sea turtle assemblage that occupied the Oligocene coastal waters of the southeastern United States. This tendency toward endemism also is seen in some parts of the co-occurring cetacean assemblage, which included at least two endemic families. Regionally restricted endemic assemblages appear to have been the norm among pre-Miocene pancheloniid sea turtles. It is not until the Miocene that crown cheloniids appear and begin to achieve very widespread to global distributions.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank J. Johnson who visited the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique and brought back excellent photographs of specimens of Eochelone brabantica for us to use. His efforts were fruitful thanks to the considerable help he received there from P. Godefroit, J.-J. Blairuacq, and W. Miseur. We thank W. Joyce and I. Danilov for their very helpful reviews of this paper, J. G. Maisey and N. D. Pyenson for their comments on an early version of the manuscript, and R. T. J. Moody and J. F. Parham for helpful discussions on Eochelone brabantica. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the library staff of the U.S. Geological Survey, who skillfully ran down many old and obscure references that were difficult to locate. We offer our sincere thanks to all of these people for their efforts on our behalf.

Handling editor: Sean Modesto