What the Hell is Turtle Evolution? 

Sounds legit

Some scientists think the shell is hindering their evolution and maybe thats why octopuses are evolving so fast they dont even have skeletons or cartlidge

Having looked for it, I am unsure which feature it is. In my herpetology class we discussed the lack of fenestra, but my professor was a snake researcher, so not a ton of time was spent on turtle anatomy. Do you have a source which discusses this idea? Because it sounds fascinating!

Good to hear! I have met a few researchers who are well versed in turtles, and especially sea turtles, so I may discuss with them before that.

@@RaptorChatter Sea turtles get enough attention! Turtles unto themselves are interesting without limiting the scope to a handful of marine species

Tuataras are always unreasonably cute.

They also have one of the lowest functional temps of any reptile about 65 F, 18 C

There’s a newish Netflix kids movie, Leo, with Adam Sandler & Bill Burr playing the 5th grade class pets of a tuatara and a tortoise. It’s surprisingly really good!

We also see that sort of expansion (not as extreme) of the ribs in burrowing animals, as it helps stabilize the body.

All it takes sometimes is one or two great fossils.

@@RaptorChatter True but DNA is the only absolute answer

There's only so many wildly strange animals in the fossil record that aren't related to others, so it's in the plans!

We had a turtle as my kindergarten class pet! They're great if you have the space for them.

And then he just went and died

Fair, if anything we might try and do both!

Glad I wasn’t the only one haha

That is a very fair critique. I am attempting to be fair to both published ideas from the last few years, and the Chinlechelys paper was fairly recent. I agree. They are almost certainly closely related to archosaurs. My only concern is early parareptiles had the diapsid condition, and that far down the tree there's some debate still, so parareptiles, and archosaurs might (unlikely at this point) be sister groups. That is the only reason I hedge my bets in videos like this. It may take only one more fossil from the middle Permian, which more distinctly unites certain groups to resolve this. But that doesn't exist yet, so I wanted to be careful about nailing them down to a single position. That said, at the end I do reiterate that they are probably close to the archosaurs. In 5 years time it probably won't be an issue to say that, but for now there are still some discussions about it.

You're welcome!

Emerald tree boa. They are available in the pet trade, but buy from a breeder, because not taking more out of the wild is better, and also they can be defensively aggressive, so are usually more show snakes than handling snakes. There are green snakes which are more handlable if that's your interest.

I agree, and wouldn't be surprised at all if it happens. The northern Tethys sea sediments in China have provided so many early marine reptiles I feel even a paleobiogeography study might hint at that.

It’s a theropod dinosaur

Everything went extinct 100 Ma, except Spinosaurus, and then we just evolved from it.

@@RaptorChatter this is the first time I ever understood satire/sarcasm via text in my life lol (I’m adhd and autistic)

They're that even if they're related to archosaurs though. They'd have split off from birds and crocs before the Permian, which would make birds and crocs closer related to one another than they are to Turtles, which would be an entirely unique early branching group of archosauriforms.

@@RaptorChatter When you put it that way, that does make the turtle lineage sound very ancient!

It is a SpongeBob reference

@@jorgevaldez7619 - I guess I didn't notice lol

It's not just you tubers, it's researchers. The GOE is hard to quantify, because there were such few fossils, and it came in waves based on banded iron formations.

No, likely they're equally related to both birds and crocs, but birds and crocs are closer related to each other than to turtles.

And where in the video was anything else ever stated, or even implied? The evolution of reptiles isn't a straightforward line, and turtles are different in many ways from other reptiles.