Megalochelys
Name:
Megalochelys
(big shell).
Phonetic: Meg-ah-lo-chel-iss.
Named By: H. Falconer & P. T.
Cautley - 1837.
Synonyms: Colossochelys.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Testudines,
Cryptodira, Testudinoidea, Testudinidae.
Species: M. atlas, M. cautleyi?,
M. margae, M. sondaari.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Largest species had a shell approaching 2.1
meters long. Estimated body length of such individuals up to 2.5
to 2.7 meters long.
Known locations: Confirmed fossils ranging all the
way from India through to Indonesia.
Time period: From Late Pliocene to Early
Pleistocene, though some populations seem to have existed until the
middle Pleistocene..
Fossil representation: Partial remains of numerous
individuals.
Megalochelys
is one of the largest tortoises ever to walk the earth. Individuals
of Megalochelys can vary greatly in size, though
the largest species
M. atlas, (formerly a distinct genus known as Colossochelys),
is known to have had an upper shell size approaching just over two
meters in length. This large size meant that Megalochelys
was simply
too big and too difficult to handle for most predators of the day,
and the genus was able to successfully spread over much of Southeast
Asia.
Megalochelys
as a genus however seems to have met its demise at the hands of early
human hunters. Equipped with greater intelligence and tools, early
Human settlers were able to work around the tough shell and skin of
even the largest Megalochelys. These tortoises
being slow and
providing an easy source of meat soon succumbed to the increasing
numbers of people. Evidence of this fate come from the stark
observations that the population decline of Megalochelys
always seems
to coincide after the establishment of the first human populations in
those areas, with the last Megalochelys
disappearances coinciding
with the last areas to be reached by early people.
Further reading
- On additional fossil species of the order Quadrumona from Siwaliks
Hill. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 6:354-360. - .
Falconer & P. T. Cautley - 1837.
- Communication on the Colossochelys atlas, a fossil tortoise of
enormous size from the Tertiary strata of the Siwalk Hills in the north
of India. - Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London
1844(12):54–84. - H. Falconer & P. T.
Cautley - 1844.
- Ecological history and latent conservation potential: large and
giant tortoises as a model for taxon substitutions. - Ecography.
Wiley. 33 (2): 272–284. - Dennis M. Hansen, C.
Josh Donlan, Christine J. Griffiths & Karl J.
Campbell - 2010.
- Conservation Biology of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises. -
Chelonian Research Monographs. 5 (First ed.). Chelonian
Research Foundation. - Anders Rhodin, Peter Pritchard, Peter
Paul van Dijk, Raymond Saumure, Kurt Buhlmann, John Iverson,,
Russel Mittermeier - 2015.
- Turtles and tortoises of the world during the rise and global
spread of humanity: first checklist and review of extinct Pleistocene
and Holocene chelonians. - Chelonian Research Monographs.
5(8):000e.1–66. - Anders G.J. Rhodin, Scott Thomson,
Georgios L. Georgalis, Hans-Volker Karl, Igor G. Danilov,
Akio Takahashi, Marcelo S. de la Fuente, Jason R. Bourque,
Massimo Delfino, Roger Bour,,John B. Iverson, H. Bradley
Shaffer & Peter Paul van Dijk - 2015.
- On the nomenclature of the largest tortoise that ever lived:
Megalochelys sivalensis Falconer & Cautley, 1837 vs.
Colossochelys atlas Falconer & Cautley, 1844 (Reptilia,
Testudinidae). - The Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. 76
(1): 162. - Evangelos Vlachos - 2019.
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