Land turtles (genus)

The genus appeared in the Eocene , 55.8 million years ago. In the Tertiary period, land turtles were much more widespread than now, their range encompassing Africa and North America ^[1] . The oldest fossils of the Ypresian tier were found on Ellesmere Island , Canada ^[2] .

The modern two species of land turtles have a shell length of 15-25 cm and live in the steppes and semi-deserts of South Asia .

• Geochelone elegans (Schoepff, 1795) - Star Turtle ;
• Geochelone platynota (Blyth, 1863) - Burmese turtle .

Previously, sporiferous ( Centrochelys sulcata ) ^[3] and Madagascar turtles ( Asterochelys ) ^[4] were also included in the genus. Together with the Burmese tortoise, they are all listed in the IUCN Red List .

Occasionally, an African leopard tortoise ( Geochelone or Stigmochelys pardalis ) is included in the genus ^[5] .

Extinct species

• † Geochelone demissa (Gilmore, 1931) - Upper Eocene of Mongolia ^[6] ;
• † Geochelone insolitus (Matthew and Granger, 1923) - Eocene- Oligocene of Mongolia ^[7] ;
• † Geochelone crassa (Andrews, 1914) - Early Miocene of Kenya ^[8] ;
• † Geochelone stromeri (Meylan and Auffenberg, 1986) - Miocene of South Africa ^[9] ;
• † Geochelone laetoliensis (Meylan and Auffenberg, 1987) - Pliocene of Tanzania ^[10] ;
• † Geochelone oskarkuhni (Khosatzky and Mlynarski, 1971) - Pliocene of Mongolia ^[11] ;
• † Geochelone vulcanica (López-Jurado & Mateo, 1993) - Pliocene of Gran Canaria ^[12] , the length of the shell reached 61 cm ^[13] ;
• † Geochelone kalganensis (Gilmore, 1931) syn. Hesperotestudo kalganensis - named after the find of Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou ) ^[14] , Pliocene- Pleistocene of China ^[15] ;
• † Geochelone burchardi (Ahl, 1926) is the Pleistocene of Tenerife ^[12] , the largest species with a shell length of 65-94 cm ^[13] , like G. vulcanica , lived on the Canary Islands ^[16] .

• Darevsky I.S. , Orlov N.L. Rare and endangered animals. Amphibians and reptiles: Ref. allowance / ed. V. E. Sokolova . - M .: Higher School, 1988 .-- S. 145-146. - 463 p., [16] p. silt - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-06-001429-0 .

• The Reptile Database: Geochelone