Modern Day Pig-Nosed Turtle
Credit: pitcharee
Talk about having a bad day… fossilized turtles caught in the act – yes, the act of having sex. Researchers can only speculate, but one possibility of a death trap during copulation was when the mating turtles were caught as they sank to deeper layers of the lake nearly 50 million years ago. The lake’s deep layers may have held deadly volcanic gases or other toxins.
The fossils were discovered at the Messel Pit in Germany which once was a deep volcanic crater lake in a wet, tropical environment. It has become the richest site in the world for understanding the living environment of the Eocene, the epoch between 57 million and 36 million years ago when mammals began conquering the planet. Other animals discovered there include early horses, reptiles, primates, honeybees, giant ants and countless birds and bats.
