Teenagers, beware! Here is another very good reason to never, ever have sex. Like these 50-million-year-old turtles, you could get so caught up in the act, that you don’t notice you are sinking into a bog full of toxic volcanic gasses. It’s a real risk! This happened to more than one pair of filthy, sex-having turtles. And condoms will not save you.
The researchers analyzed nine pairs of the turtles. Each pair was apparently made up of a male and a female — the females are slightly larger than males, have shorter tails and apparently had a hinged lower shell that may have helped them lay large eggs.
In addition, the turtles in each pair always had their rear ends oriented toward one another. Finally, in two of the pairs, “the tails of the partners are aligned with each other,” Joyce said. “This is the very position in which the tails are held when living turtles mate. This observation is the true smoking gun.
“No other vertebrates have ever been found like these, so these are truly exceptional fossils,” Joyce said.
Read the rest of Charles Q. Choi’s story at MSNBC