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Leatherbacks

Leatherback sea turtle
Temporal range: Holocene 0.012–0 Ma
Female, digging in the sand
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Testudines
Suborder: Cryptodira
Clade: Americhelydia
Family: Dermochelyidae
Genus: Dermochelys
Blainville, 1816
Species: D. coriacea
Binomial name
Dermochelys coriacea
(Vandelli, 1761)
Synonyms

The leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), sometimes called the lute turtle or leathery turtle or simply the , is the largest of all living turtles and is the fourth-heaviest modern reptile behind three crocodilians. It is the only living species in the genus Dermochelys and family Dermochelyidae. It can easily be differentiated from other modern sea turtles by its lack of a bony shell, hence the name. Instead, its carapace is covered by skin and oily flesh. Dermochelys is the only extant genus of the family Dermochelyidae.

Dermochelys coriacea is the only species in genus Dermochelys. The genus, in turn, contains the only extant member of the family Dermochelyidae.

Domenico Agostino Vandelli named the species first in 1761 as Testudo coriacea after an animal captured at Ostia and donated to the University of Padua by Pope Clement XIII. In 1816, French zoologist Henri Blainville coined the term Dermochelys. The leatherback was then reclassified as Dermochelys coriacea. In 1843, the zoologist Leopold Fitzinger put the genus in its own family, Dermochelyidae. In 1884, the American naturalist Samuel Garman described the species as Sphargis coriacea schlegelii. The two were then united in D. coriacea, with each given subspecies status as D. c. coriacea and D. c. schlegelii. The subspecies were later labeled invalid synonyms of D. coriacea.


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Wikipedia

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