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Turtles Protestudo bessarabica from the Late Miocene of Ukraine

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Abstract

The paper describes three incomplete shells of terrestrial turtle Protestudo bessarabica (Testudinidae) from the Late Miocene (Maeotian, biozone MN 12) of the Belka locality (Ukraine). This is the first description of this species from Ukraine. Materials from Belka add to the data on morphology and variation of the P. bessarabica shell in the formula of the neural plates, the shape of the precentral scale and the gular projection. Additionally, materials from Belka confirm the previously known variation of the shell of P. bessarabica in other characters. This species had a wide geographic distribution in Eastern Europe (Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine) in a rather narrow time interval of the Late Sarmatian–Maeotian and may be important for biostratigraphic correlation.

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Notes

  1. Danilov et al. (2017) spells the names of the localities as Novo-Yelizavetovka and Cherevichny.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the reviewers A.O. Averianov (Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences) and E.A. Zvonok (Taras Shevchenko National University of Luhansk) for their valuable comments, as well as D.V. Ivanoff (National Museum of Natural History, Kyiv) for providing the photos of the locality.

Funding

The research was partially supported by the Government Program AAAA-A19-119020590095-9 “Study and preservation of the structure and dynamics of biodiversity of amphibians, reptiles, and birds of Eurasia,” by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project no. 19-04-00514 (to E.V.S.) and by the Program of the Russian Academy of Sciences Presidium and Ministry of Education and Science of Russia “Evolution of the organic world. The role and significance of planetary processes (2019)” (to I.G.D.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117647, Moscow, Russia

    E. V. Syromyatnikova

  2. Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 199034, St. Petersburg, Russia

    E. V. Syromyatnikova & I. G. Danilov

  3. National Museum of Natural History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 01030, Kyiv, Ukraine

    T. V. Krakhmalnaya

  4. Institute of Paleobiology, National Museum of Georgia, 0105, Tbilisi, Georgia

    V. M. Chkhikvadze

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  1. E. V. Syromyatnikova
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  2. T. V. Krakhmalnaya
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  3. V. M. Chkhikvadze
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  4. I. G. Danilov
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Correspondence to E. V. Syromyatnikova.

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Translated by D. Ponomarenko

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Syromyatnikova, E.V., Krakhmalnaya, T.V., Chkhikvadze, V.M. et al. Turtles Protestudo bessarabica from the Late Miocene of Ukraine. Paleontol. J. 53, 647–659 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S003103011906011X

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