How I made this illustration | Archelon Paleoart

Digital illustration of an Archelon.
#paleoart #speeddrawing

Archelon is an extinct marine turtle from the Late Cretaceous, and is the largest turtle ever to have been documented, with the biggest specimen measuring 4.6 m (15 ft) from head to tail and 2.2–3.2 t (2.4–3.5 short tons) in body mass.

Archelon had a leathery carapace instead of the hard shell seen in most sea turtles. The carapace may have featured a row of small ridges, each peaking at 2.5 or 5 cm (1 or 2 in) in height. It had an especially hooked beak and its jaws were adept at crushing, so it probably ate hard-shelled crustaceans, mollusks, and possibly even sponges, while slowly moving over the seafloor.
With its large and strong foreflippers, Archelon was likely able to produce powerful strokes necessary for open-ocean travel and, if need be, escape from fellow marine predators. It inhabited the northern Western Interior Seaway, a mild to cool temperate area, dominated by plesiosaurs, hesperornithiform seabirds, and mosasaurs.

The holotype measures 352 cm (11.5 ft) from head to tail, with the head measuring 60 cm (2 ft), the neck 72 cm (2.4 ft), the thoracic vertebrae 135 cm (4.4 ft), the sacrum 15 cm (0.5 ft), and the tail 70 cm (2.3 ft). The largest specimen, Brigitta, measures around 4.6 m (15 ft) from head to tail and 4.0 m (13 ft) from flipper to flipper and, in life, weighed around 2.2–3.2 t (2.4–3.5 short tons). Skulls of Archelon measured at up to 100 cm (3.3 ft).

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