Elseya uberrima facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Elseya uberrima Temporal range: Eocene
Scientific classification
Genus:	Elseya
Species:	uberrima

Elseya uberrima is an Eocene species of extinct Australian snapping turtle.

Taxonomy

During his time at the Queensland Museum, Charles Walter De Vis described a number of fossil turtles from the Darling Downs region of Queensland, Australia. All four species described were declared a single diagnosable species by Thomson, 2000.

To avoid confusion the synonymy for the species is as follows:

• Elseya uberrima (De Vis, 1897)
  • Chelymys uberrima De Vis, 1897: 3
  • Chelymys antiqua De Vis 1897: 4
  • Chelymys arata De Vis 1897: 5
  • Pelocomastes ampla De Vis 1897: 6–7

This synonymy has made the genus name Pelocomastes a junior synonym of Elseya and in their recent revision of that genus Thomson et al. (2015) resurrected Pelocomastes as a subgenus to represent the Queensland clade of the Elseya. Therefore, Elseya (Pelocomastes) uberrima is the type species for this subgenus.

A) Lectotype of Elseya uberrima; B) lectotype of Elseya arata; C-D) dorsal and ventral views of the lectotype of Pelocomastes ampla.