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Walking with Dinosaurs: Black turtle

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Description

Helochelydra nopcsai
Named by France d. Lapparent de Broin and Murelaga, 1999 (Generic name by Nopesa, 1928)
Diet: Omnivore (Plants, insects, fungi, terrestrial snails, and may have searched for decaying plant matter and dinosaur dung to grub)
Type: Solemydid turtle
Size: Carapace lenght of 40 cm
Region: Europe (Isle of Wight England UK)
Age: Early Cretaceous (129 to 125 million BC; Barremian)
Enemies: Theropod dinosaurs such as Eotyrannus; crocodylomorphs such as Anteophthalmosuchus
Episode: Giant of the Skies (Only in the companion book, Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History; as unnamed large, black turtles)
Info: Living in the Wealden floodplains in what is now the Isle of Wight, England (Wessex Formation) alongside dinosaurs such as Iguanodon, Mantellisaurus, Polacanthus, Hypsilophodon, Valdosaurus, Neovenator, Eotyrannus, Baryonyx, and unnamed sauropods and a dromaeosaur, as well as pterosaurs (Istiodactylus and Caulkicephalus) and crocodylomorphs (such as Anteophthalmosuchus, Koumpiodontosuchus, etc.), this Cretaceous turtle was a member of a lesser-known line of turtles with tall-shells known as solemydidae that were found in rocks in North America and Europe dating back to the Late Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous period and the prescence of osteoderms in its legs show that Helochelydra nopcsai was terrestrial, while some solemydids were semi-aquatic. In 2011, a well-preserved skull of Helochelydra nopcsai was found, revealing insight into what this animal and other solemydids were like.

Note: Coloration based on a photograph of a black since it was described being black. Since this was a really, really lesser-known animal, it was hard to find reference.

So yeah, this is another background creature that's absent in the original show, but only appeared in the book Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History (but no picture of it is shown), in which the Ornithocheirus (Tropeognathus) encounters them while laying and resting on an island and later gets driven away by them. They were described as large, carnivorous, black turtles. This was hard to determine what the species is, but according to artist :iconwwcb: , they were a species from the Wessex Formation called Helochelydra nopcsai. 

Requested by :iconninjakingofhearts:

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Whitedragon66's avatar
can i with permission publish something similar to this please