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The word turtle is borrowed from the French word tortue or tortre 'turtle, tortoise'. [3] It is a common name and may be used without knowledge of taxonomic distinctions. In North America, it may denote the order as a whole. In Britain, the name is used for sea turtles as opposed to freshwater terrapins and land-dwelling tortoises. In Australia ...
General American usage agrees; turtle is often a general term; tortoise is used only in reference to terrestrial turtles or, more narrowly, only those members of Testudinidae, the family of modern land tortoises; and terrapin may refer to turtles that are small and live in fresh and brackish water, in particular the diamondback terrapin ...
Tortoises and sea turtles were imported into San Francisco, Sacramento and various other Gold Rush towns throughout Alta California to feed the gold mining population. Galápagos tortoise and sea turtle bones were also recovered from the Gold Rush-era archaeological site, Thompson's Cove (CA-SFR-186H), in San Francisco, California. [144]
Sea turtles, along with other turtles and tortoises, are part of the order Testudines. All species except the leatherback sea turtle are in the family Cheloniidae . The superfamily name Chelonioidea and family name Cheloniidae are based on the Ancient Greek word for tortoise: χελώνη ( khelōnē ). [ 16 ]
The African spurred tortoise (Centrochelys sulcata), also called the sulcata tortoise, is an endangered species of tortoise inhabiting the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, in Africa. It is the largest mainland species of tortoise in Africa, and the third-largest in the world, after the Galapagos tortoise and Aldabra giant tortoise.
Testudo, the Mediterranean tortoises, are a genus of tortoises found in North Africa, Western Asia, and Europe. Several species are under threat in the wild, mainly from habitat destruction . Background
Leatherback sea turtle: Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) Emydidae Rafinesque, 1815: 12: Pond turtles, terrapins, and sliders: Red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) Geoemydidae Theobald, 1868: 24: Asian leaf turtles, roofed turtles, and Asian box turtles: Amboina box turtle (Cuora amboinensis) Kinosternidae Agassiz, 1857: 4 ...
These tortoises may attain a length of 25 to 36 cm (10 to 14 in), [12] with males being slightly larger than females. A male tortoise has a longer gular horn than a female, his plastron (lower shell) is concave compared to a female tortoise. Males have larger tails than females do.