A new species of extinct Late Quaternary giant tortoise from Hispaniola.

Insular giant tortoise diversity has been depleted by Late Quaternary extinctions, but the taxonomic status of many extinct populations remains poorly understood due to limited available fossil or subfossil material, hindering our ability to reconstruct Quaternary island biotas and environments. Giant tortoises are absent from current-day insular Caribbean ecosystems, but tortoise remains from Quaternary deposits indicate the former widespread occurrence of these animals across the northern Caribbean. We report new Quaternary giant tortoise material from several cave sites in Pedernales Province, southern Dominican Republic, Hispaniola, representing at least seven individuals, which we describe as Chelonoidis marcanoi sp.

First report of Plesiochelys etalloni and Tropidemys langii from the Late Jurassic of the UK and the palaeobiogeography of plesiochelyid turtles.

Plesiochelyidae is a clade of relatively large coastal marine turtles that inhabited the shallow epicontinental seas that covered western Europe during the Late Jurassic. Although the group has been reported from many deposits, the material is rarely identified at the species level. Here, we describe historical plesiochelyid material from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of England and compare it with contemporaneous localities from the continent.