Not that much time plus technical difficulties yesterday meant that I only did one sketch on #paleostream. This is Chelonoidis pucara a new, giant tortoise from the Pleistocene of Argentina. I am exceptionally happy with this being published because of several reasons...
Firstly, until now we didn't have such giant tortoises from South America, although we have them plenty elsewhere in the Pleistocene and we are certainly not lacking in tortoises overall in SA. You can look at the paper btw here, it's open access: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/27229
Secondly this fills for me an important personal gap, because a few years back I made this poster, that tries to give and overview of the giant tortoises that lived along the genus Homo and man, the south american gap always bugged me...
If you want to have a closer look at this poster or the other posters in the series - I covered tortoises, birds, elephants and crocodiles so far - you can do so here. I might put an update on the poster actually, did that before with the crocodiles.
ADDENDUM
I have indeed updated the poster! Chelonoides pucara is home!
A variety of giant "tortoises" shared the planet with humans and other hominins during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Compare their size and
