Gigantic Turtle

An ancient species of turtle whose remains have been discovered in Spain is the largest marine turtle [blank] found in Europe. The turtle, which has been named Leviathanochelys aenigmatica, was up to 3.74 meters long. It lived sometime [blank] 72.1 million and 83.6 million years ago, around the same time as dinosaurs such as Velociraptor. Fragments of the fossil were first found by a hiker in 2016 in Coll de Nargó, a village in the Catalonia region. The remains were [blank] up and collected by local government and museum officials. In 2021, Àngel Luján at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and his colleagues conducted more excavations [blank] the area and discovered that the fossil actually belonged to a new species of turtle. During this excavation, the team realized that the turtle's 90-centimetre-wide pelvis had two bone bulges [blank] its front, unlike any other turtle pelvis previously described. The turtle is the second-largest marine turtle ever discovered and the largest to [blank] been found in Europe.