Available for editorial, museum & print licensing — inquiries & rates →
The largest sea turtle known, cruising the Western Interior Seaway of the Late Cretaceous. Archelon spanned some four meters across its flippers and, in place of a solid shell, bore an open framework of narrow bony struts beneath leathery skin. While it superficially resembles living sea turtles, Archelon belongs to a group of extinct turtles called protostegids that went extinct in the Cretaceous, with modern leatherback sea turtles independently evolving a similar ocean-going lifestyle later during the Cenozoic.
