New Turtle 'Tree of Life' Sheds Light on Reptile Evolution

A team of scientists has managed to reconstruct a detailed "tree of life" for turtles that may tell researchers a bit more about their evolutionary origins. The new tree reveals how turtles are related to one another, to other reptiles and even to dinosaurs.

In this case, the researchers used a new genetic sequencing technique called Ultra Conserved Elements (UCE). This new method allows scientists to move beyond years of speculation and showed that turtles are not the most closely related to lizards in snakes. Instead, they're most closely related to birds, crocodiles and dinosaurs, which places them in the newly named group, Archelosauria.

The new findings also reveal further insights insto softshell turtles. Despite the fact that shoftshells appear in the fossil record long before their mud-loving counterparts, previous studies had linked the two groups of turtles. Now, it appears as if softshells are in a league of their own on the evolutionary tree.

"I have been working on the evolutionary relationships of turtles for over 20 years using a variety of methods," said James Parham, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Fossils are essential for showing us what extinct turtles looked like, but also in letting us know when and where they lived in the past."

The findings reveal a bit more about the evolutionary relationships between turtles and other animals. This, in turn, may help inform future studies.

The findings are published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.