Millard County Chronicle | 1951-03-08 | Page 2 | Just How Old is Oldest Turtle?

Just How Old Is Oldest Turtle? News Dispatches Hint Some Last 1,000 Years Two giant sea turtles, on recently captured in Australia's Tasman Sea and the other taken in Korean waters 15 months ago, were centenarians cen-tenarians when the Battle of Hastings Has-tings was fought in 1066 according to the first news dispatches telling about each. The cabled reports blithely ventured ven-tured in each case that 1,000 years would be a fair estimate of the captive's age. If so, they were hatched and swimming before Leif Ericson was born. How's that again? The turtle, scientists agree, has roamed the earth's lands and seas in virtually unchanged form for 200,000,000 years. It saw dinosaurs come and go, and witnessed the development of mankind. Nor do scholars dispute the fact that the turtle is the longest living backboned creature on earth today. Uniformly, however, the men who know turtles best look askance at, the idea that any of the stolid reptiles rep-tiles alive today antedate, say, the Spanish Armada (1588), or even the voyage of the Mayflower (1620).