Podocnemis expansa ( Schweigger, 1812 )

Gaffney, Eugene S., Meylan, Peter A., Wood, Roger C., Simons, Elwyn & De Almeida Campos, Diogenes, 2011, Evolution Of The Side-Necked Turtles: The Family Podocnemididae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (350), pp. 1-237 : 29

Podocnemis expansa ( Schweigger, 1812)

SYNONYMY: See Boulenger (1889), Siebenrock (1902, 1904), Wermuth and Mertens (1961, 1977), Pritchard and Trebbau (1984), and Iverson (1992).

TYPE SPECIMEN AND LOCALITY: See Iverson (1992).

DIAGNOSIS: See Boulenger (1889), Siebenrock (1902), Williams (1954a), Pritchard and Trebbau (1984).

REFERRED MATERIAL: YPM Herpetology 15401, AMNH Herpetology 58098, AMNH Herpetology 62947, NMV 1852, USNM 222470, YPM Herpetology 204, FMNH Herpetology 98958 (49), USNM Herpetology 65112, USNM Herpetology 65113, USNM Herpetology 28976, USNM Herpetology 28975.

PREVIOUS WORK: Siebenrock (1902) and Williams (1954a) provide useful information. Groombridge (1982) and Valenzuela (2001) have general literature reviews. Williams (1950; redrawn in Hoffstetter and Gasc, 1969) figures the cervical vertebrae. Williams (1954a) figures the palate. Good skull figures are in Grey (1855, repeated in Gaffney, 1979) and Hay (1908). Gaffney (1990) figures most of the postcranial osteology except the shell. Pritchard and Trebbau (1984) figure skull and shell with sutures.

DISCUSSION: Although relatively common in collections and referred to in many systematic works, there is no rigorous, comparative morphologic diagnosis for this species (or the genus Podocnemis for that matter). Among the references indicated, Williams (1954a) and Pritchard and Trebbau (1984) do provide descriptive information particularly useful in preserved specimens but few comparative osteologic characters.