Meiolania

Meiolania - fossil in the American Museum of Natural History

• Lord Howe Island
• New Caledonia
• Northern Territory, Australia
• Efate, Vanuatu
• Fiji?

Meiolania (Greek for "Little Wanderer" ) is an extinct genus of the suborder of the Berger- neck turtles ( Cryptodira ). There are known four species that existed from the Middle Miocene to Holocene.

Characteristics and dissemination

Meiolania had an unusually shaped skull, wearing a lot of knob -like and horn-like appendages. Including the two lateral pins of the head horn had a total width of up to 60 cm. These projections probably prevented that the animals were able to completely withdraw their head in the tank. The tail was protected by armored rings and wore thorn -like prongs on the end. Turtles of the genus Meiolania were very large. With a length of 2.50 m, they were the second largest known land turtles, only surpassed by Colossochelys atlas, which seemed to the Pleistocene in Asia.

Fossil finds are known from Australia, the Lord Howe Island, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. The types of the Lord Howe Island and New Caledonia, however, were much smaller.

Turtle bones that have been discovered in the Fiji Islands, and probably also to this genus.

Way of life

Meiolania turtles were herbivores. As 1925 fossil remains were found near beaches, you went from an aquatic lifestyle. Today it is known that they lived terrestrial.

Discovery history

The genus Meiolania was built in 1886 by Richard Owen, based on the fossil record of the Lord Howe Island. Owen missed the names Meiolania platyceps and Meiolania minor (now a synonym of Meiolania platyceps ). It was the first well-preserved fossils of Meiolaniidae family. To them it was shown that the first known remains of a closely related species of Queensland, as Ninjemys oweni is known today, and until 1992 the genus Meiolania was assigned, not one of the lizards, but the turtles. 1901 classified Arthur Smith Woodward, the South American species Niolamia argentina in the genus Meiolania, but this was not accepted by later authors.

The remains of the second kind Meiolania mackayi were found on Walpole in the Loyalty Islands and 1925 described by Charles Anderson, former director of the Australian Museum. She was smaller and less robust than Meiolania platyceps. Fossil finds of this type are also known by the Pindai Caves on Grande Terre, New Caledonia, and of Pulau Tiga.

Meiolania brevicollis was described in 1992 by paleontologists Dirk Megirian. The remains date from the Camfield Beds in the Northern Territory. The species lived in the middle Miocene. The skulls and other horn proportions were flatter than Meiolania platyceps.

2010 described Arthur W. White, Trevor H. Worthy, Stuart Hawkins, Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs the fourth type Meiolania damelipi of the island belonging to Vanuatu Efate. The remains date from the time of the Lapita culture in the Holocene.

Extinction

Probably Meiolania damelipi was chased 3,000 years ago by the people of the Lapita culture to extinction. Supported this assumption by the presence of turtle bones in landfills in the archaeological site on Efate Teouma. The remains contained mainly leg bones, with the result that the turtles were slaughtered somewhere. The bones are not in younger layers present, which is close to that Meiolania became extinct about 300 years after the first contact with people.