Dear Zooarchers -- Many thanks to those who responded to my previous query
concerning British tortoises. We have now had a chance to compare the
vertebra to a number of American tortoises and there is no question that
what we have is an animal with a very high-arched carapace -- higher than
Geochelone. The carapace had the type of architecture where the dorsal
aspects of the vertebrae are separate from the carapace rather than fused
into it.
Just to cover all the bases, though, I would like to ask what genera of
sea turtles might have commonly been recovered from Roman (or later) sites
in the British Isles. If it's a sea turtle, that would perhaps be a little
more likely than importing a tortoise from sub-Sarharan Africa! (Not that
those old Romans didn't have the reach). Any ideas on sea turtles will
assist me in developing a short list to check. Are any of the sea turtles
particularly high-carapaced?
Thank you for any insights -- Deb Bennett
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