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With teamwork, careful handling, and a little help from liquid nitrogen, scientists unearth a remarkable baenid turtle fossil.

The Late Cretaceous period was kind of the heyday of turtles.

Watch Scientists Extract a Rare Turtle Fossil

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With teamwork, careful handling, and a little help from liquid nitrogen, scientists unearth a remarkable baenid turtle fossil.

The Late Cretaceous period was kind of the heyday of turtles.

Evolution

Watch Scientists Extract a Rare Turtle FossilPublished: May 27, 2022David Attenborough: In 2019, Robert finds something truly remarkable.Robert DePalma: See the cracks already forming?David Attenborough: Yeah.Robert DePalma: Look at that. So we're gonna have to really monitor that before we glue it cause this is getting vulnerable now.David Attenborough: An almost complete creature. After 66 million years, finding anything intact is extremely rare.Robert DePalma: Make a thon, get the consolidate, and to get this block out, we're freezing it.David Attenborough: To keep the fossil in one piece as they remove it from the crumbly layer, the team decides to use a potentially tricky technique. They've covered the fossil in plaster to protect it.Robert DePalma: Ready?David Attenborough: Freeing it means they have to flash freeze the crumbly rock surrounding it Using liquid Nitrogen at around minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit.Robert DePalma: Watch your footing. Loren, I'm worried about brittleness here. Get that hammer.Give this a couple whacks with the hammer. Okay. Move over five centimeters. Good. It's cracked loose. Yep.Loren Gurche: Okay, it's loose.Robert DePalma: So we have to get this out in one piece. One, two, three.Loren Gurche: Yee-haw.Robert DePalma: Total success.Loren Gurche: Total success.Robert DePalma: This is a technique used in archeology for digging up human remains. We've got enough time to work with the fossil and not damage it. And I couldn't be happier.David Attenborough: And the creature Robert and his team have found? A turtle. This is the fossil, now it's been cleaned up. It's lying on its side. Here's the outline of its shell. The shape of the shell and the sculpt edges here, tell us that this was a Baenid turtle. This Baenid turtle would have looked very similar to modern Cooter turtles, and lived in the same sort of fresh water environments.Emily Bamforth: The late Cretaceous period is kind of the hay day of turtles in at least northern North America. There were at least 16 species that were known from Saskatchewan, and compare that today, we only have three. So back then it was a much better time to be a turtle.

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Watch Scientists Extract a Rare Turtle Fossil

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Support Provided By

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