Foss. Rec., 23, 1–13, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-23-1-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. A new species of baenid turtle from the Early Cretaceous Lakota Formation of South Dakota Walter G. Joyce1, Yann Rollot1, and Richard L. Cifelli2 1Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland 2Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Norman, OK 73072, USA Correspondence: Walter G. Joyce (
[email protected]) Received: 27 September 2019 – Revised: 6 January 2020 – Accepted: 22 January 2020 – Published: 12 February 2020 Abstract. Baenidae is a clade of paracryptodiran turtles (e.g., Lyson et al., 2011, 2019). Only little is known, by con- known from the late Early Cretaceous to Eocene of North trast, about the early evolution of the group, mostly due to America. The proposed sister-group relationship of Baenidae a lack of fossils. At present, only three unambiguous baenid to Pleurosternidae, a group of turtles known from sediments fossils are known from the Early Cretaceous, in particular dated as early as the Late Jurassic, suggests a ghost lin- the holotype specimens of Arundelemys dardeni Lipka et eage that crosses the early Early Cretaceous. We here doc- al., 2006, Trinitichelys hiatti Gaffney, 1972, and Protobaena ument a new species of paracryptodiran turtle, Lakotemys wyomingensis (Gilmore, 1919) from the Aptian–Albian of australodakotensis gen. and sp. nov., from the Early Creta- Maryland, Texas, and Wyoming, respectively. A broad set of ceous (Berriasian to Valanginian) Lakota Formation of South mostly unfigured fragmentary remains from the Early Creta- Dakota based on a poorly preserved skull and two partial ceous of Nevada (Bonde et al., 2008), Montana (Oreska et al., shells.