A fossil discovered in southern Utah adds a turtle with a pig nose to the list of animals that roamed with the dinosaurs.
The Golden’s bacon turtle gets the “bacon” part of its name from its pig-like snout. Scientists found a nearly complete fossil in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Paleontologist Joshua Lively describes the now-extinct species in a paper published last week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. “There is really no other turtle, fossil or modern, that has a snout that looks like this,” he says. “It is very unique.”
The two-foot long turtle had a broad nose with distinct nostrils separated by bone. Other turtle noses have a single opening with a fleshy division instead.
The Golden’s bacon turtle lived during the Cretaceous Period, 76 million years ago. The first part of its name honors Jerry Golden, a volunteer at the Natural History Museum of Utah who prepared the fossil for display.
Lively doesn’t yet know why the turtle had a pig-like nose, or how the species went extinct. He says more specimens are needed to answer those questions.
