In an uncanny coincidence, researchers have pieced together two fossil specimens of an ancient sea turtle that were collected more than 160 years apart.
The first bone fragment had been sitting in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia since at least the mid-19th century, The Inquirer reported.
Biologist Louis Agassiz described the piece of turtle limb in an 1849 paper a while after it was incorporated into the Philadelphia collection, saying it was discovered in New Jersey.
But the second piece of the puzzle didn't turn up until fall 2012 when amateur fossil hunter and analytical chemist Gregory Harpel brought in a large bone fragment that rang a bell for paleontologist David Parris.
The museum's curator of natural history, Parris is known for a "steel-trap memory," according to The Inquirer. He remembered seeing a similar fossil fragment in the Academy of Natural Sciences around 25 years earlier.
The scientists couldn't believe the two pieces would actually fit, but they had to check.
"To say that it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience would be short-selling it," Jason Schein, assistant curator of natural history at the New Jersey State Museum, told The Inquirer.
Schein took the partial fossil bone that Harpel had discovered to the Philadelphia museum, where the two halves of the ancient sea turtle's arm were brought back together.
"Sure enough, you have two halves of the same bone, the same individual of this giant sea turtle," Dr. Ted Daeschler, associate curator of vertebrate zoology and vice president for collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, said in a school news release. "One half was collected at least 162 years before the other half."
When put together, the two bones measured 21 inches long. Using the complete A. mortoni humerus, the scientists estimated that the living sea turtle was 10 feet from head to tail.
Besides helping to paint a picture of what giant ancient sea turtles looked like, the respective bone discoveries show that fossils can survive when exposed to the elements for longer than scientists previously thought.
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