rss
Br J Ophthalmol 2006;90:134 doi:10.1136/bjo.2005.082172
  • Cover

Superlatives

  1. I R Schwab1,
  2. K Fritsches2
  1. 1University of California Davis, 4860 Y Street, Suite 2400, Sacramento, CA 95817, USA; irschwab@ucdavis.edu
  2. 2Vision, Hearing, and Touch Research Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia


      Graphic

      Biologists dream in the superlative. Whales are the largest mammals, cheetahs are the fastest vertebrates, bar-headed geese fly the highest of any bird, and so forth. But you would be hard pressed to think of superlative features when it comes to turtles, or even reptiles. Rest assured there are superlatives in this order. Superlatives among reptiles are still with us.

      Marine turtles, in some form, date from at least the Triassic period as early as 220 million years ago. For the next 100 million years, there was a rich diversity of other marine reptiles as well, but most of these were lost by the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. Yet, marine turtles endured.

      There was a monster sea turtle living during the Cretaceous period. Archelon and its few relatives ruled the sea as a 5 metre, 2500 kg behemoth turtle, but this animal became extinct shortly after the dinosaurs. But an intriguing and closely related shard of a family from this ancient lineage can still be found in our …

      [Full text of this article]

      This Article

      1. Extract
      2. Full text
      3. PDF

      Responses

      1. Submit a response
      2. No responses published

      Register for free content

      The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

      Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.