Marine Turtles and Mammals

Abstract

Marine turtles were common 130 million years ago in the Cretaceous period and their fossil record dates back at least 200 million years. They lived together with dinosaurs. They are air-breathing vertebrates secondarily adapted to aquatic life. The major aquatic adaptations involve the evolution of paddle like forelimbs and high reproductive rate to compensate mortality at early life. An adult female may lay about 1000 eggs in a breeding season, out of which only 2 to 3 hatchling might reach adulthood and return to the same site to nest where they were hatched. They are reported to have a long life span perhaps upto 100 years.