An anatomy professor at New York Institute of Technology
College of Osteopathic Medicine has contributed to a published study that
provides clues on the early evolution of one of nature’s unique
developments: the turtle shell.
Assistant Professor Gaberiel Bever, Ph.D., is part of a team
maintaining that the 260-million-year-old reptile from South Africa,
Eunotosaurus africanus, is the earliest known version of a turtle, in part
because of its distinctive T-shaped ribs. Those ribs, said Bever, represent an
early step in the evolutionary
development of the carapace, the hard, upper part of the shell of today’s
turtles.