we probably just have the bones of the weirdest-looking critter in the species
uncanny resemblance
ShowLooks like a turtle without its shell. Are the scientists sure it didnt have a shell made of cartilage thats been lost to time?
I feel like this is one of those models we're completely wrong about.
You know what, I feel like the shell part of the turtle is best represented by the "turt" part of the world turtle. It just looks the way "turt" sounds.
So a turtle without it's shell I think should start to be called a "le" (pronounced like in the world turtle), which represents very well, as a sound, a "turt"-less turtle
I also just noticed that the first "t" could be the legs and the tail of the turtle, while the "l" are the front legs and the "e" is the head and mouth.
Meaning that the shell part would actually be "urt".
More research is going to be needed to figure out this one.