Suyckerbuyk's turtle

home | back | back to the tour

This species (Glyptochelone suyckerbuyki) is characterised by a carapace ornament of bony ridges across the plates of both dorsal (back) and ventral (belly) surfaces. In the days that little was yet known about fossil turtles, some finds of ventral carapace plates were mistaken for elk antlers. In the famous work, 'Histoire naturelle de la Montagne Saint-Pierre de Maestricht', by the French scientist Faujas de Saint Fond (1799-1803), there is a magnificent engraving of a portion of ventral carapace which is described as such. Based on a specimen collected at Berg en Terblijt, this species was described scientifically by Casimir Ubaghs in 1879. Glyptochelone roughly translates as 'with a carved carapace' and the species name, suyckerbuyki, honours Guillaume Suyckerbuyk, who bought the described specimen from Ubaghs and donated it to the Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique, at Bruxelles. There are only very few known specimens of Glyptochelone suyckerbuyk