Stupendemys Wood, 1976

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 : 67

Stupendemys Wood, 1976

‘‘ Stupendemys ’’ souzai Bocquentin and Melo, 2006

TYPE SPECIES: Stupendemys geographicus Wood, 1976 .

DISTRIBUTION: Miocene of northern South America.

DIAGNOSIS (from Wood, 1976: 2): ‘‘ Shell gigantic; carapace depressed, with irregular nodular contours on external surface and deep median notch at front; anterior border of nuchal bone thickened and moderately to strongly upturned; posterior peripheral bones moderately scalloped along margins; neurals arranged in uninterrupted sequence, numbers two through six hexagonal, the seventh pentagonal. Mesoplastra hexagonal to subcircular, largely confined to bridge; lateral ends of pectoral-abdominal scute sulci terminating just anterior to axial notches of shell.’’ For further diagnostic characters of vertebrae and limbs, see Wood (1976: 2, 3).

DISCUSSION: Despite Bocquentin and Melo (2006), we do not recognize other species of Stupendemys fide Meylan et al. (2009). This is another well-diagnosed, distinct podocnemidid taxon that lacks a skull and has insufficient characters to be resolved in our character analysis. See discussion under Caninemys for why this shell is probably not that genus and in any case, there are no skull-shell associations.