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An enormous Jurassic turtle bone bed from the Turpan Basin of Xinjiang, China

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Abstract

A spectacular new terrestrial Konzentratlagerstätte is introduced from the Turpan Basin of Xinjiang, China that probably belongs to the late Middle Jurassic Qigu Formation. It contains a mass accumulation of “xinjiangchelyid” turtles preliminarily identified as Annemys sp. In the zone with the highest turtle concentration, complete and articulated turtle skeletons are tightly packed at a density of up to 36 turtles per square meter. The fossiliferous layer is thickened here and shows an erosional base. This high concentration zone outcrops approximately 10 m in length and shows no decrease in turtle density after exposing 2 m of the layer into the hillside. Adjacent is a more expansive zone of at least 10 m by 30 m. In this region, the fossiliferous layer is evenly thick, and approximately five, fully disarticulated turtles are present per square meter. A conservatively estimated 1,800 turtles may, therefore, have been deposited at this site. It is likely that these aquatic turtles gathered in a retreating water hole in a riverine environment during a drought, much as some aquatic turtles will do today, but perished when the habitat dried up completely. A following catastrophic rainfall event caused a debris flow, possibly channelized in a dry river bed, which transported complete turtles, disarticulated turtles, and mudstone clasts and deposited them after a short distance. This taphonomic model is consistent with previous environmental reconstructions of the Turpan Basin during the late Middle Jurassic in predicting the episodic breakdown of regional monsoonal circulation resulting in a seasonally dry climate with severe episodic droughts.

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Abbreviations

GIN:

Geological Institute, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

PIN:

Palaeontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

SGP:

Sino-German Cooperation Project

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Annette Richter for her participation in discovering this site and Simone Hoffmann, Marianne Koch, Dong Man, Verena Régent, Rico Schellhorn, Achim Schwermann, and Ben Thuy for their sedulous help during excavation and preparation. For collaboration and organization, we are deeply indebted to Hans-Ulrich Pfretzschner (Tübingen) and to personnel from the Geological Survey No. 1 and the Geological Surveying Institution in Urumqi, and the Jilin University in Changchun, especially Du Qing. Arthur Georges (Canberra, Australia) is thanked for sharing his valuable insights into extant turtle ecology. Daniel Gacek (Berlin, Germany) helped with the preparation of ESM Fig. 3. WGJ would like to thank Don Brinkman, Tyler Lyson, and Jim Parham for useful insights. MR would like to thank the MTA-ELTE Lendület Dinosaur Research Group for support. The 2008 and 2009 field seasons, including OW, were funded by a grant to Hans-Ulrich Pfretzschner (PF 219/21) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The 2011 field season, including MR, was funded by a DFG grant to WGJ (JO 928/2). Finally, thanks for the kind support of Project “111” of China at Jilin University.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Invalidenstraße 43, 10115, Berlin, Germany

    Oliver Wings

  2. Department of Geosciences, Universität Tübingen, Hölderlinstraße 12, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Oliver Wings, Márton Rabi & Walter G. Joyce

  3. Department of Paleontology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, 1117, Budapest, Hungary

    Márton Rabi

  4. MTA – ELTE Lendület Dinosaur Research Group, Budapest, Hungary

    Márton Rabi

  5. Lehrstuhl Paläontologie, Geologisches Institut, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Bernhard-von-Cotta-Strasse 2, 09599, Freiberg, Germany

    Jörg W. Schneider

  6. Steinmann-Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie und Paläontologie, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 8, 53115, Bonn, Germany

    Leonie Schwermann

  7. Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China

    Ge Sun

  8. Shenyang Normal University, 253 North Huanghe Street, Shenyang, 110034, China

    Ge Sun

  9. Paleontological Institute, Shenyang Normal University, 253 North Huanghe Street, Shenyang, 110034, China

    Chang-Fu Zhou

  10. Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Walter G. Joyce

Authors
  1. Oliver Wings
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  2. Márton Rabi
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  3. Jörg W. Schneider
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  4. Leonie Schwermann
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  5. Ge Sun
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  6. Chang-Fu Zhou
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  7. Walter G. Joyce
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oliver Wings.

Additional information

Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Wings, O., Rabi, M., Schneider, J.W. et al. An enormous Jurassic turtle bone bed from the Turpan Basin of Xinjiang, China. Naturwissenschaften 99, 925–935 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0974-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0974-5

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