Circular-Shelled Turtle Fossil Found in South America

While studying the La Puente pit in the famous Cerrejón Coal Mine, experts in the United States and Panama discovered the fossils of a new species of a large turtle, which lived around 60 million years ago.

The most prominent feature of the creature was its shell, which experts determined was round, almost perfectly so. Details of the creature appear in the latest issue of the Journal of Paleontology, Science Blog reports.

The fossil, called Puentemys mushaisaensis, was found at the same location that revealed the remnants of the world's largest snake, Titanoboa, and the Smart car-sized turtle called Carbonemys.

The fact that most of the fossils recovered from Cerrejón are large is very weird for experts. They say that instances of paleontological research sites where such a trend exists were never heard of before digs started at the South American site.