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South American Side-necked Turtles
Chelinae
The Chelidae are one of three living families of the turtle suborder Pleurodira and are commonly called the Austro-South American side-neck turtles. The family is distributed in Australia, New Guinea, parts of Indonesia, and throughout most of South America. It is a large family of turtles with a significant fossil history dating back to the Cretaceous. The family is entirely Gondwanan in origin, with no members found outside Gondwana, either in the present day or as...
7 branches of this subfamily, most-observed first · about 22 known species
Bearded Toadheads
genusPhrynops
Typical Toad-headed Turtles and Allies
genusMesoclemmys

Mata Matas
genusChelus

Platemys
genusPlatemys

Spiny Swamp Turtles
genusAcanthochelys

Rhinemys
genusRhinemys

Ranacephala
genusRanacephala
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Chelinae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 797513.