''Hydropelta'' is a genus of

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

turtle from marine deposits in the

Jura Mountains The Jura Mountains ( ) are a sub-alpine mountain range a short distance north of the Western Alps and mainly demarcate a long part of the French–Swiss border. While the Jura range proper (" folded Jura", ) is located in France and Switzerla ...

of eastern France. Like many other eurysternid taxa, ''Hydropelta'' was at times considered the same species as ''

Eurysternum ''Eurysternum'' is an extinct genus of thalassochelydian turtle. Its type species is ''Eurysternum wagleri'', the holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the spe ...

''. Originally described as a species of ''Chelone'', it was renamed ''Hydropelta'' by Hermann von Meyer in 1860. Later, it was synonymized with ''Eurysternum'' by Oertel (1915), but was treated as a distinct genus and possibly a synonym of ''

Solnhofia ''Solnhofia'' is a genus of extinct thalassochelydian turtle from the Late Jurassic of Germany. The type species is ''Solnhofia parsonsi'', named by Gaffney in 1975 for a partial skull and jaw from the early Tithonian of the Solnhofen Formation ...

'' by Lapparent de Broin et al. (1996). However, ''Hydropelta'' is distinct from other eurysternids by the characters of the fontanelles and plastron.Anquetin, J., Puntener, C., and Joyce, W.G., 2017. A review of the fossil record of turtles of the clade Thalassochelydia. Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 58 (2):317-369.

References

* Thalassochelydia Prehistoric turtle genera Kimmeridgian genera Late Jurassic turtles Late Jurassic reptiles of Europe Jurassic France Fossils of France Fossil taxa described in 1860 Taxa named by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer {{paleo-turtle-stub