Bairdemys Gaffney and Wood, 2002

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 : 51-52

Bairdemys Gaffney and Wood, 2002

TYPE SPECIES: Bairdemys hartsteini Gaffney and Wood, 2002 .

INCLUDED SPECIES: Bairdemys hartsteini , B. venezuelensis , B. sanchezi , B. winklerae . AMNH 30000, an unnamed skull from the Castillo Formation, is considered as another species of Bairdemys (see below).

DIAGNOSIS: A podocnemidid of the Tribe Stereogenyini known from the skull and shell; uniquely possessing among the Tribe Stereogenyini an extremely small and slitlike postotic antrum, and a ventral vertical flange on the squamosal; medial edges of palatal cleft curved in contrast to Lemurchelys , Shweboemys , and Stereogenys ; eustachian tube separated by bone from rest of fenestra postotica as in Latentemys but in contrast to all other Tribe Stereogenyini ; jugal-pterygoid contact present in contrast to Cordichelys , Shweboemys , and Stereogenys .

Postcrania with saddle-shaped cervicals (known only for B. hartsteini ); carapace (known only for B. venezuelensis ) lacking neurals, costals meeting on midline; anterior plastral lobe short in contrast to nearly all other Podocnemididae ; pectoral-abdominal sulcus not crossing mesoplastron; pectoralhumeral sulcus in anterior half of entoplastron; intergular scales barely extending onto entoplastron.

DISTRIBUTION: Miocene of Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Weems (2009) has described the shell and lower jaws of a Bairdemys from the Oligocene of South Carolina, thus extending the range of this genus. Weems also hypothesized that partial shell remains from the Miocene of Cuba ( MacPhee et al., 2003) and the Miocene of Maryland ( Collins and Lynn, 1936) are Bairdemys , but this material is too incomplete to confirm.