Inflated, 6.3" Fossil Tortoise (Stylemys) - Nebraska

This is a nicely inflated, detailed, 6.3" long specimen of an Oligocene aged tortoise (Stylemys nebrascensis) collected from the White River Formation. It was collected from the Shalimar Ranch near Harrison, Nebraska. It was found broken with the front portion fragmented. Those pieces have been put back together so that it's mostly complete with only some small portions of shell missing. There is no rock underneath this reassembled shell at the front of the turtle..

Stylemys ("pillar turtle") is the first fossil genus of dry land tortoise discovered in the United States. The genus lived in temperate to subtropical areas of North America, Europe, and Asia
These extinct tortoises had primitive jaw muscles, unlike today's tortoises, which also display the os transiliens bone, and would have been herbivorous. While Stylemys species did exhibit the same neck structure as modern tortoises, the forelimbs were unsuitable for burrowing.