Lower Cretaceous fossils from China shed light on the ancestral body plan of crown softshell turtles (Trionychidae, Cryptodira)

Abstract Pan-trionychids or softshell turtles are a highly specialized and widespread extant group of aquatic taxa with an evolutionary history that goes back to the Early Cretaceous. The earliest pan-trionychids had already fully developed the “classic” softshell turtle morphology and it has been i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Donald Brinkman, Márton Rabi, Lijun Zhao
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2017-07-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04101-0