[Taxacom] Australian turtles

[John Grehan]

Scott - turtles are not a group I have studied, but in a quick glancing
look at Georges & Thomson (2010) I note:

"Trionychidae  30 living species in North America, Africa, Asia, and
New Guinea." Interesting range. Does that include Madagascar? What is the
sister group?

"Chelidae.Australia, New Guinea, Timor and Roti ...South America. This is
said to be of " of undisputed Gondwanan origin", but is it? What we have
seems to be a circum-Pacific range rather than one including core Gondwana
(e.g. Africa, India, Madagascar. What is the sister group?

Heads (2014) notes that the sea turtles Natator that breeds along the coast
of northern Australia has a sister group, Chelonia, that has a worldwide
distribution. Heads suggests that as with Arhemia (plant genus) and its
relatives, the distribution is consistent with early vicariance of
widespread ancestors at breaks around the Arafura and Coral Seas.

By the way, (2010) is a very nice overview, but I would selfishly have
liked to have seen distribution maps for each taxon. That would have made
the paper much easier to assimilate for the biogeographer where locations
are recognized as informative. Perhaps something to keep in mind in the
future please? (if RepFocus has the ranges illustrated then not such a
problem, but it is nice when one can cite a publication source directly).

Cheers, John