Dacquemys paleomorpha Williams, 1954b

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 : 34

Dacquemys paleomorpha Williams, 1954b

TYPE SPECIMEN: SMNS 12645, a nearly complete skull without lower jaws, lacking parts of the left side and the central basicranial region (Dacque´, 1912: pl. 2, figs. 6–8; Gaffney, 1979: fig. 128; Williams, 1954b: pl. 1; Gaffney et al., 2002: figs. 2 and 3).

TYPE LOCALITY AND HORIZON: Dacqué (1912) gave the locality at first in reference to a shell: ‘‘Unteroligocäne Fluviomarinestuffe nördlich der Birket Qerun; nordlich non Tamieh; ostlich vom Schweinforthplateau. Schädel: aus derselben stufe bei Dimêh. Alles Fayum’’ (ibid., p. 310). Williams (1954b, repeated in Gaffney, 1979) has the locality as ‘‘Diieh’’ which seems to be a misspelling of ‘‘Dimêh.’’ The reference to the skull ‘‘from the same sediment near Dimêh’’ presumably means the Qasr el-Sagha or Birket Qarun Formations of late Eocene age.

REFERRED MATERIAL: DPC 5986 (Gaffney et al., 2002: figs. 4, 5), partial skull lacking anterior part of palate and some of left side. Field No. 86-292, collected by Alex van Nievelt. B-4 (lower Jebel Qatrani Fm., 1/ 4 mile southeast of A), AMNH quarry B area, early Oligocene ( Seiffert, 2006).

Possibly BMNH R3346, a lower jaw figured by Williams (1954b; previously identified by Andrews, 1906, as Podocnemis fajumensis ) that fits the triturating surface of the maxilla in Dacquemys , as argued by Williams.

PREVIOUS WORK: Williams (1954b). Gaffney et al. (2002) provides a redescription based on two specimens and a reconstruction of the skull.

DISCUSSION: There is no support for the earlier suggestions that the shell for Dacquemys paleomorpha is the shell-based species, Podocnemis fajumensis Andrews, 1903 ( Williams, 1954b; Lapparent Broin, 2000a). We argue below that fajumensis is the shell of a Neochelys species. We have concluded that based on skull morphology, Dacquemys is the sister taxon to UCMP 42008, which has a very unusual shell similar to that of Albertwoodemys . The possibility exists that Dacquemys is the skull for Albertwoodemys , as both are known from the early Oligocene of the Fayum.