Even the Arctic was balmy at the time, with average temperatures hovering around 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit), said Don Brinkman, a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, who helped analyze the turtle. The region would have felt like modern-day North Carolina. The fact that Hugo lived there helps show was happening at the poles at the time -- and what could happen with future climate change. "It gives us some idea of how dramatic the effect of temperature change was on biota in the past," Brinkman said. "There's no reason to think it would be any different today." Hugo also helps fill in some blanks in what we know about the history of turtles on Earth, said Robert McCord, Curator of Paleontology at the Arizona Museum of Natural History, in Mesa. The fossil doesn't just suggest a new route for ancient migrations of Asian turtles. It also pushes the date of those migrations back more than 10 million years. After a slow pace of discovery, several exciting papers have been published in recent months about ancient turtles, McCord added. "It's wild stuff all of a sudden in the turtle field." Related Links: |
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