Peace River Turtle/Tortoise Casting Call

[digit]

I'm putting out an open call for any collectors who have any reasonably complete tortoise or turtle material from the Peace River (or its tributaries) or even possibly Bone Valley material from the quarries in the area. I'm working with Jason Bourque in the fossil prep lab on the campus of UF here in Gainesville (presently working on an 18 Ma gator skull from the Thomas Farm site). Jason is reassembling some turtle specimens that had been collected in Florida that have been languishing in the collection for decades. He's presently reassembling a giant tortoise plastron collected in the 1980s. He's doing this to gather material for a book project he's working on. Material from the Peace River has largely been ignored for the past 150 years. Decisions made in the 1800s (wrongly) assumed that material from the Peace would be worn and disarticulated isolated finds in lag deposits in the river bottom and would be of little interest to science and so the Peace was left mostly to avocational hunters (good for us) but this left a gap in the scientific record.

 

Several important type specimens have come from the Peace River area--the slider turtle Trachemys euglypha and the giant Galapagos tortoise size Hesperotestudo crassiscutata are two prominent examples. Jason is interested in locating any additional material that is complete enough (and has good collection data) which might provide other good examples of the turtle/tortoise species found in this area of southern Florida.

 

Although it is a bit of a long shot I told Jason I'd inquire here on the forum to see if anybody has such material who wouldn't mind having it looked at by Jason. Let me know if any of you have such material or possibly know folks (off the forum) who might have material that would seem to fit this description.

 

Feel free to contact me my PM if you have any information that might prove useful. Thanks in advance for any efforts in locating any scientifically important specimens for this project.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[hoffy]

Ken, 

I attached 2 photos of giant tortoise that I have, these are not associated. I also have some other tortoise Turtle stuff from the Peace.

Will Jason be accompanying Dr. Hulbert when when he heads out to view various collections.

If Jason is interested pm  his email and I could send some turtle tortoise pics of some other pieces.

Dave

 

[digit]

Thanks a bunch. I'll shoot you a PM.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken