Afternoon Session

Roger Wood at an NYTTS Turtle and Tortoise Show Photo: Sherry Dohm

Roger C. Wood
Director of Research, The Wetlands Institute, Stone Harbor, New Jersey
Professor of Biology, Stockton State College, Pomona, New Jersey

“Recent Discoveries Shed New Light  
on the Evolution of Leatherback Turtles”

     A single species of leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) survives in the world today. Its shell structure is so peculiar that for a long time all turtles were subdivided into two categories: leatherbacks and all others. Leatherbacks are the largest of all existing turtle species, and perhaps even the largest of all living reptiles. They also have the largest geographic distribution of any modern turtle species, being found in nearly all the major oceans of the world. They are one of the deepest-diving of all vertebrates, and somehow manage to subsist happily on a diet consisting almost entirely of jellyfish.

     Until recently, paleontologists assumed there was never more than one kind of leatherback turtle at any given time in the past. Most fossil material was routinely referred to a single genus, Psephophorus, all from such far-flung localities as Austria, Belgium, Alabama, New Zealand, and Antarctica. The widespread assumption has always been that Psephophorus evolved directly into Dermochelys. Newly discovered fossil leatherback specimens, however, clearly show that leatherbacks have had a far more interesting and complex evolutionary history,

	The giant Stupendemys geographicus suspended in the Hall of Vertebrate Origins at the American Museum of Natural History Photo: Ghedoghedo, Wikepedia Commons

including at times as many as three different contemporaneous lineages.

     Dr. Wood will share new information on the evolution of leatherback turtles, based on recently discovered fossils from the East Coast of the United States as well as long-neglected ones from Belgium.

     Roger Wood is well known to NYTTS members and the turtle world for his work with diamondback terrapins at the Wetlands Institute in southern New Jersey. Over the years he and student researchers from the Diamondback Terrapin Conservation Project have given numerous reports at our Annual Seminars.

     But Roger is first a paleontologist. In 1972 he discovered the world’s largest-known fossil turtle, Stupendemys geographicus, from late Tertiary deposits in Venezuela. This giant “mega-turtle” fossil now “flies” above our heads in the fourth-floor Hall of Vertebrate Origins at the American Museum of Natural History.

Peter Pritchard with a large adult male Santa Cruz tortoise (Chelonoidis porteri) Photo: Chelonian Research Institute

Peter C. H. Pritchard
Director, Chelonian Research Institute, Oviedo, Florida

“Galápagos Tortoises: There Are Still Surprises
Latest Developments from the Galápagos”

     Galápagos tortoises are among the most familiar and most studied of all the world’s tortoises. But just as the pink iguana showed up as a brand new Galápagos species a year or two ago, there are newly discovered tortoises too: tortoises over 120 years of age still capable of laying good eggs, a whole new species of tortoise on one of the most familiar islands in Galápagos, 2,000 tortoises waiting to be released on Isabela, and over 1,600 tortoises on a volcano that was assumed to have just a few.

     Peter Pritchard, one of the world’s foremost experts on turtles and tortoises, is the Director of the Chelonian Research Institute in Oviedo, Florida. The Institute houses one of the largest collections of turtle specimens in the world. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Oxford and his Ph.D. from the University of Florida, where he studied marine turtles with Archie Carr as his major professor. Peter has written eight books about turtles, the most recent a semi-autobiographical work entitled Tales from the Thébaïde. He has studied turtles in many parts of the world, and for several decades has operated a field station in Guyana for protection of nesting marine turtles. Currently, his main activities involve turtles and tortoises in the Galápagos Islands and in eastern Asia, as well as performing a variety of roles in the administration and operation of the Chelonian Research Institute.