Freshwater turtle — Eubaena hatcheri
Geologic period: Latest Cretaceous — Maastrichtian
Age: Latest Maastrichtian.
Feeding: Exact diet is not established from these partial skeletons alone.
Locomotion: Freshwater aquatic locomotion.
Body plan: Freshwater turtle with a bony shell and aquatic-adapted baenid body plan.
Evidence: Shell and skeletal anatomy are direct evidence.
Why it matters: The turtles pull the visitor's attention away from giant dinosaurs and back toward the rivers, ponds and wetlands that supported the whole ecosystem.
Plain Language Identity: A baenid freshwater turtle from the latest Cretaceous of western North America.
What You Are Looking At: Three partial fossil turtle skeletons identified in the Smithsonian exhibit as Eubaena hatcheri.
Ecosystem: Latest Cretaceous freshwater environments.
Preservation: Three partial skeletons.
Research History: Eubaena hatcheri has a complex taxonomic history. Researchers have discussed possible synonymy with the skull-based species Eubaena cephalica but have avoided treating that synonymy as definitively proven.
Specimen Context Note: The type of Eubaena hatcheri comes from the Maastrichtian Lance Formation. The exact provenance of each Smithsonian display partial skeleton should remain separate from the broader Hell Creek room narrative until catalog-linked.
Open Questions: Do not label every display skeleton as Hell Creek merely because it appears in the river-edge sequence.
Source Urls: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour/current-exhibits/deep-time-virtual-tour-fossil-list; https://www.mrfdigs.com/publications/2010_lyson-joyce_gamerabaena.pdf
Enrichment Method: SAGE curated research pass; title + scientific name + source scene matched; display reconstruction separated from evidence; provenance uncertainty retained
Scientific name: Eubaena hatcheri
Evidence / representation: Representative evidence-type visual; not the exact specimen.
Representative evidence-type visual; not the exact specimen.
T. rex & Triceratops: The Last American Dinosaur World.
This object page stays inside SAGE Museum. The Smithsonian link below is provided only as the original scholarly collection record. It opens separately.