Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 14, 2026

Americhelydia

Americhelydia is a clade of turtles that consists of sea turtles, snapping turtles, the Central American river turtle and mud turtles, supported by several lines of molecular work. Prior to these studies some morphological and developmental work have considered sea turtles to be basal members of Cryptodira and kinosternids related to the trionychians in the clade Trionychoidea. Americhelydia and Testudinoidea, both clades within Durocryptodira, split apart during the early Cretaceous.

Last revised
Jun 14, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
408 w
Citations
7
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Americhelydia
Temporal range:
Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous to Holocene
Common musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus), a species of the family Kinosternidae
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Testudines
Suborder: Cryptodira
Clade: Americhelydia
Crawford et al., 2014
Subclades

Americhelydia is a clade of turtles that consists of sea turtles, snapping turtles, the Central American river turtle and mud turtles, supported by several lines of molecular work.456 Prior to these studies some morphological and developmental work have considered sea turtles to be basal members of Cryptodira and kinosternids related to the trionychians in the clade Trionychoidea.78 Americhelydia and Testudinoidea, both clades within Durocryptodira (hardshell turtles), split apart during the early Cretaceous.910

References

References

  1. Joyce, W. G., Parham, J. F., Lyson, T. R., Warnock, R. C., & Donoghue, P. C. (2013). A divergence dating analysis of turtles using fossil calibrations: an example of best practices. Journal of Paleontology, 87(04), 612-634.
  2. "Protostegidae". The Paleobiology Database. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  3. Edwin A. Cadena and James F. Parham (2015). "Oldest known marine turtle? A new protostegid from the Lower Cretaceous of Colombia". PaleoBios. 32 (1): 1–42.
  4. Chandler, C. H., & Janzen, F. J. (2009). The phylogenetic position of the snapping turtles (Chelydridae) based on nucleotide sequence data. Copeia, 2009(2), 209-213.
  5. Barley, A. J., Spinks, P. Q., Thomson, R. C., & Shaffer, H. B. (2010). Fourteen nuclear genes provide phylogenetic resolution for difficult nodes in the turtle tree of life. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 55(3), 1189-1194.
  6. Crawford, N. G., Parham, J. F., Sellas, A. B., Faircloth, B. C., Glenn, T. C., Papenfuss, T. J., ... & Simison, W. B. (2015). A phylogenomic analysis of turtles. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 83, 250-257.
  7. Joyce, W. G. (2007). Phylogenetic relationships of Mesozoic turtles. Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, 48(1), 3-102.
  8. Werneburg, I., & Sánchez-Villagra, M. R. (2009). Timing of organogenesis support basal position of turtles in the amniote tree of life. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 9(1), 82.
  9. Pereira, Anieli G.; Sterli, Juliana; Moreira, Filipe R.R.; Schrago, Carlos G. (August 2017). "Multilocus phylogeny and statistical biogeography clarify the evolutionary history of major lineages of turtles". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 113: 59–66. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2017.05.008. hdl:11336/41137. ISSN 1055-7903. PMID 28501611.
  10. Joyce, Walter G.; Rabi, Márton; Clark, James M.; Xu, Xing (2016-10-28). "A toothed turtle from the Late Jurassic of China and the global biogeographic history of turtles". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 16 (1): 236. doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0762-5. ISSN 1471-2148. PMC 5084352. PMID 27793089.