Morphological Analysis of the Carapace of the African Sideneck Turtle (Pelusios castaneus)

Olukole, S. G.; Okusanya, B. O.; Agbato, O. A.; Kekere, A. D.; Oyeyemi, M. O.; Oke, B. O.

doi:10.21608/jva.2014.44730

Morphological Analysis of the Carapace of the African Sideneck Turtle (Pelusios castaneus)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of Veterinary Anatomy, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Iba- dan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

² Department of Veterinary Surgery and Reproduction, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

10.21608/jva.2014.44730

Abstract

The morphological analysis of the carapace of the African sideneck turtle (Pelusios castaneus) was carried out using twenty adult turtles comprising twenty females and forty males picked up at different times in various river banks in Ibadan, Nige- ria with the view to providing baseline information that could be useful in the comparative osteology of sea and freshwater turtles as well as in the identification of the shell of the turtle in paleontological and archaeological investigations. The average body weight of the turtles used for the study was 0.82 ± 0.03kg. The curved carapace and plastron lengths of the turtles were 26.4 ±1.87cm and 19.3 ± 1.13cm, respectively. The carapace of the turtles varied from dark brown to dark in colour, had five vertebral, four pairs of costal and twelve pairs of marginal scutes with the inframarginal scute forming the bridge between the carapace and plastron.The turtle had seven neural bones flanked on each side by eight pairs of pleurals, while eleven pairs of peripheral bones surrounded the pleurals. The basic anatomy of the shell of this animal is similar to those of earlier reports on shell morphology of the chelonians.

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