Testudo marina Garsault, 1764

Dubois, Alain & Bour, Roger, 2010, The nomenclatural status of the nomina of amphibians and reptiles created by Garsault (1764), with a parsimonious solution to an old nomenclatural problem regarding the genus Bufo (Amphibia, Anura), comments on the taxonomy of this genus, and comments on some nomina created by Laurenti (1768), Zootaxa 2447, pp. 1-52 : 31

Testudo marina Garsault, 1764

Under the nomen Testudo marina or “Tortue de Mer”, the lower half of plate 675 in Garsault (1764) shows a sea turtle, identified as such by its flippers and its heart-shaped shell. Contrary to most of the drawings in Garsault (1764), this figure is not especially accurate, notably for the head and the limbs scutellation, and for the free fingers and toes. However, the first supernumerary costal on the elongated carapace allows to attribute this specimen to the “loggerhead turtle”, currently known as Caretta caretta ( Linnaeus, 1758) (family CHELONIIDAE Oppel, 1811 b). This is consistent with the probable French origin of Garsault’s specimens (see above), as this species was the only shelled turtle to regularly frequent the southern (Mediterranean) French sea shore at Garsault’s time (de la Cepède 1788 a: 97–98; Bonnaterre 1789: 21) and is still the commonest species of sea turtle in the western Mediterranean ( Angel 1946: 180; Scaravelli & Tripepi 2006: 400). We here consider Testudo marina Garsault, 1764 as an invalid junior doxisonym of Testudo caretta Linnaeus, 1758 .