Cerrejonemys wayuunaiki Cadena, Bloch, and Jaramillo, 2010

Gaffney, Eugene S., Meylan, Peter A., Wood, Roger C., Simons, Elwyn & De Almeida Campos, Diogenes, 2011, Evolution Of The Side-Necked Turtles: The Family Podocnemididae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (350), pp. 1-237 : 59

Cerrejonemys wayuunaiki Cadena, Bloch, and Jaramillo, 2010

TYPE SPECIMEN: ‘‘University of Florida,

Florida Museum of Natural History Vertebrate Paleontology Collections, Gainesville, Florida /Museo Geológico, at the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones en Geosciences, Minería y Quimica, Bogotá, Colombia’’ UF / IGM 33, Cadena et al. (2010: 368). The presence of the holotype and only known specimen in two widely separated institutions is unexplained in Cadena et al. (2010).

TYPE LOCALITY: Cerrejón Coal Mine, Guajira Peninsula, Colombia. See Cadena et al. (2010) for further information.

HORIZON: Cerrejón Fm., mid to late Paleocene, see Cadena et al. (2010) for further information.

DIAGNOSIS: Cadena et al. (2010: 369). We do not dispute the conclusion that this taxon is diagnosable and separate from previously known taxa.

ETYMOLOGY: See Cadena et al. (2010).

REFERRED MATERIAL: None.

PREVIOUS WORK: Cadena et al. (2010).

DISCUSSION: Cadena et al. (2010) produce a character matrix and phylogenetic analysis concluding that Cerrejonemys is the sister taxon to the genus Podocnemis . The principal character supporting this resolution is the relatively small postorbital and the jugal-parietal contact in Cerrejonemys . This may prove to be the case, but in our admittedly limited examination of the specimen, which is badly crushed, these sutures seem ambiguous, as they are in the published photographs. Cerrejonemys has a cavum pterygoidei, so it is a podocnemidid, but it apparently lacks the Podocnemis- like triturating surface ridges, and the temporal emargination is more extensive, comparable to that seen in Lapparentemys rather than Podocnemis . So, until better material is available, we feel that Cerrejonemys is best considered Podocnemididae incertae sedis.