This must have been one cool place...

...we talked a while back about the crocodilians that might have been food for the gigantic snake Titanoboa in the 60 million year old rain forest habitat preserved in Colombia's Cerrejon coal mine. Now, researchers have found a new species of fossil turtle, Cerrejonemys wayuunaiki , that had a shell the thickness of a dictionary.

Actually, the most interesting thing about the find is that it helps answer some biogeographic questions about the turtle distributions. The closest living relatives are found in various South American river basins. Except for one. In Madagascar. The find provides support for the idea that the group originated in South America prior to its separation from modern-day Indian and Madagascar some 90 million years ago.