Meiolania platyceps Owen, 1886a:315
Lord Howe Island horned turtle
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonym/s: Meiolania minor Owen, 1886b:471; Ceratochelys sthenurus Huxley, 1887:232
Conservation Status
Extinct
Last record: Late Pleistocene
Distribution
Lord Howe Island, New South Wales (& Queensland?), Australia
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
AMF 57984
AMF 61110
SMM P76.23.4c
Media
Above: drawing of Meiolania platyceps by Isabell Holmes.
References
Original scientific description:
Owen, Richard. (1886a). Description of fossil remains of two specimens of a Megalanian genus (Meiolania, Ow.), from Lord Howe’s Island. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1886(40): 315-316.
Other references:
Anderson, C. (1925). Notes on the extinct Chelonian Meiolania, with a record of a new occurrence. Records of the Australian Museum 14(4): 223-242.
Anderson, C. (1926). The extinct horned turtle Meiolania. The Australian Museum Magazine 2(10): 360-362.
Anderson, C. (1930). Palaeontological notes no. II. Meiolania platyceps Owen and Varanus (Megalania) priscus (Owen). Records of the Australian Museum 17(7): 309-316.
Archer, Michael, Arena, Derrick A. et al. (2006). Current status of species-level representation in faunas from selected fossil localities in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland. Alcheringa, Special Issue 1: 1-17.
Burke, Ann C., Anderson, Michael, Weld, Alison and Gaffney, Eugene S. (1983). The Reconstruction and Casting of a Large Extinct Turtle, [i]Meiolania[/i]. Curator 26(1): 5-25. [Abstract]
Erickson, Bruce R. (2018). History of the Australian Paleontological Collections In The Science Museum of Minnesota (Monograph volume 13: Paleontology). Saint Paul, Minnesota: The Science Museum of Minnesota. 30 pp.
Fletcher, H. O. (1960). Turtles of the past. The Australian Museum Magazine 13(6): 191-195.
Gaffney, Eugene S. (1983). The cranial morphology of the extinct horned turtle, Meiolania platyceps, from the Pleistocene of Lord Howe Island, Australia. Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 175: 361-480.
Gaffney, Eugene S. (1985a). The cervical and caudal vertebrae of the cryptodiran turtle, Meiolania platyceps, from the Pleistocene of Lord Howe Island. Am. Mus. Novit. 2805: 1-29.
Gaffney, Eugene S. (1985b). Meiolania platyceps Owen, 1886: The Lord Howe Island Horned Turtle, pp. 132-136. In: Vickers-Rich, Patricia and van Tets, Gerard Frederick. (eds.). Kadimakara: Extinct Vertebrates of Australia. Lilydale, Victoria: Pioneer Design Studio. 284 pp.
Gaffney, Eugene S. (1996). The postcranial morphology of Meiolania platyceps and a review of the Meiolaniidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 229: 1-166.
Gaffney, Eugene S. and McNamara, Greg. (1990). A meiolaniid turtle from the Pleistocene of northern Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum (Proceedings of the De Vis Symposium) 28(1): 107-113.
Holmes, Branden. (2021). What's Lost and What Remains: The Sixth Extinction in 100 Accounts (eBook). Self published.
Hutton, Ian. (1991). Birds of Lord Howe Island: Past and Present. Coffs Harbour Plaza, N.S.W.: Self Published. 154 pp.
Huxley, Thomas Henry. (1887). Preliminary note on the fossil remains of a chelonian reptile, Ceratochelys sthenurus, from Lord Howe’s Island, Australia. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B-Biological Sciences 42: 232-238.
Lawver, D. R. and Jackson, F. D. (2014). A review of the fossil record of turtle reproduction: eggs, embryos, nests and copulating pairs. Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 55(2): 215-236.
Lichtig, Asher J. and Lucas, Spencer G. (2018). The ecology of Meiolania platyceps, a Pleistocene turtle from Australia. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 79: 363-368.
McNamara, G. C. (1990). The Wyandotte Local Fauna: A new, dated, Pleistocene vertebrate fauna from Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum (Proceedings of the De Vis symposium) 28(1): 285-297. [Meiolania sp. cf. M. platyceps]
Mittermeier, Russell A. (1972). Zoogeography of Fossil and Living Turtles. Australian Natural History 17(8): 265-269.
Owen, Richard. (1880). Description of some remains of the gigantic land-lizard ([i]Megalania prisca[/i] Owen) from Australia. Part II. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. [b]171[/b]: 1037-1049. [includes fossil material now known to belong to M. platyceps]
Owen, Richard. (1886b). Description of fossil remains of two species of a megalanian genus (Meiolania) from ‘Lord Howe’s Island’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 177: 471-480.
Owen, Richard. (1888). On parts of the skeleton of Meiolania platyceps (Ow.). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 179: 181-191.
Squires. D. F. (1963). Carbon-14 dating of the fossil dune sequence. Lord Howe Is. Austr. J. Sci. 25. 412-3. 1963.
Sterli, J. (2015). A review of the fossil record of Gondwanan turtles of the clade Meiolaniformes: Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 56: 21-45.
Sutherland, Lin and Ritchie, Alex. (1974). Defunct volcanoes and extinct horned turtles. Australian Natural History 18(2): 44-49.
Sutherland, Lin and Ritchie, Alex. (1977). Defunct volcanoes and extinct horned turtles. Pages 7-12 in Lord Howe Island. Published by the Australian Museum, Sydney.
Turtle Extinctions Working Group et al. (2015). Turtles and Tortoises of the World During the Rise and Global Spread of Humanity: First Checklist and Review of Extinct Pleistocene and Holocene Chelonians. Chelonian Research Monographs No. 5: 1-66.
White, A. W. et al. (2010). Megafaunal meiolaniid horned turtles survived until early human settlement in Vanuatu, Southwest Pacific. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) 107(41): 15512-15516.
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