BBC has the full story on a 75 million-year-old giant sea turtle fossil that took a century and a half to put together:
Atlantochelys mortoni was originally described from a broken arm bone, or humerus, found in the 1840s in the US state of New Jersey.
Remarkably, the missing portion has also now been unearthed.
The fossil fragments are a perfect match, and indicate A. mortoni must have been 3m from tip to tail.
“When we put the two halves together, we were flabbergasted,” recalls Dr Ted Daeschler, from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia.
“We said, ‘no – that can’t be!’ We even turned them around trying to show they didn’t match, but they’re obviously supposed to be together,” he told BBC News.
Photo of the big bone at the link.
[via alphynix]