Rafetus swinhoei

The Yangtze giant softshell turtle, also commonly known as the Red River giant softshell turtle, the Shanghai softshell turtle, the speckled softshell turtle, and Swinhoe's softshell turtle, is a critically endangered species of turtle in the family Trionychidae. It is one of the largest living freshwater turtle species. Native to eastern and southern China and northern Vietnam, the species has a known population of only two individuals, and the absence of fertile females has rendered it functionally extinct.

Rafetus swinhoei

Phuongcacanh at Vietnamese Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
RafetusPBDB
Diet
piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Trionychidae
Life habit
aquatic, solitaryPBDB, for Trionychidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Trionychidae
Environment
brackish,freshwaterPBDB, for Trionychidae

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 2 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence629 ka0 Mya

2 occurrences of Rafetus swinhoei on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

2 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Rafetus swinhoei and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Rafetus swinhoei and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

20 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Rafetus swinhoei, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

2 references

Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Rafetus swinhoei

Credit
Phuongcacanh at Vietnamese Wikipedia
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Rafetus swinhoei was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itRafetus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1873