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Gaffneylania: an ‘early’ horned turtle from Eocene Patagonia

Tuesday, October 20, 2026 8:57

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Sterli et al 2015
described Eocene Gaffneylania as one of the earliest known meiolaniids – the large horned turtles (Fig 1).

Unfortunately the roof of the skull is not preserved. Skull scutes further obscure the anatomy.

Figure 1. Horned turtles to scale. Ninjemys is primitive among these.

The small bit of shell
that is known had a serrated margin. The specimen is incompletely known. So no reconstruction has been attempted.

The name honors
AMNH turtle paleontologist Eugene S. Gaffney, a specialist in meiolaniids.

Figure 3. Mongolocheys and Cubutemys nest together near, but not at, the base of the hard shell turtles. Both were considered sisters to Meiolania and Niolamia by prior workers who did not include Elginia in phylogenetic analysis. — Figure 2. Mongolocheys and Cubutemys nest together near, but not at, the base of the hard shell turtles. Both were considered sisters to Meiolania and Niolamia by prior workers who did not include Elginia in phylogenetic analysis.

The authors considered
hornless Chubutemeys (Fig 2) a basal meiolanid. The authors had their cladogram upside-down. It lacked horned pareiasaurs (Fig 1). Chubutemys is a derived hardshell turtle in the LRT.

Meiolanids are the most primitive
hardshell turtles in the large reptile tree (LRT, 2340 taxa). They are derived from Elginia (Fig 1) and Bunostegos (Fig 1). Softshell turtles arose from the small horned pareiasaur, Sclerosaurus in the LRT.

Pareiasaurs are traditionally Middle to Late Permian
in temporal range. Since turtles are extant with some marine genera, that means pareiasaurs still live among us… some chasing cats on little skateboards on YouTube.

References
Sterli J, de la Fuente MS and Krause JM 2015. “A new turtle from the Palaeogene of Patagonia (Argentina) sheds new light on the diversity and evolution of the bizarre clade of horned turtles (Meiolaniidae, Testudinata)”. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 174 (3): 519–548.

wiki/Chubutemys

wiki/Gaffneylania

wiki/Pareiasauria

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2026/10/20/gaffneylania-an-early-horned-turtle-from-eocene-patagonia/

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