Local Scientist Helps Discover New Species

UAB Ph.D. Dr. Andrew Gentry said the origin story of sea turtles is one of the great unsolved mysteries in evolutionary biology. Gentry is the lead author of a study about fossil sea turtles that may fill a critical gap in the evolution of sea turtles. | photo by McWane Science Center

Dr. Andrew D. Gentry of the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science in Mobile, Dr. James F. Parham of the University of California Fullerton and Caitlin Kiernan of the McWane Science Center in Birmingham recently announced the discovery of a new species of freshwater turtle that lived alongside dinosaurs 83 million years ago. The new turtle is named Appalachemys ebersolei in honor of Alabama paleontologist Jun Ebersole. The fossilized remains were originally found in southern Alabama during the mid-1980s and held at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa before being recognized as significant by Parham, the museum’s former curator. At nearly a meter long, the species was one of the largest freshwater turtles to ever live in North America. The study, “A Large Non-Marine Turtle from the Upper Cretaceous of Alabama and a Review of North American Macrobaenids,” was scheduled to be published today in the journal Anatomical Record.