A New Matamata Species. Now there are two

The bizarre Matamata from South America was always thought of as one species, Chelus fimbriata. It did though seem odd that the one species is present in both the Amazon and in the separate river drainages in northern South America. In the 1990s some morphological differences were found in specimens from these distinct geographical regions. Now it has been established using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA that the two populations separated about 12.7 million years ago, the time the Orinoco Basin in the north was formed. Matamatas living in the Orinoco and Rio Negro Basins and in the Essequibo drainage are morphologically and genetically distinct from those in the Amazon Basin and the Mahury drainage. The authors of the new paper have, therefore, split the old species into two: Chelus orinocensis from the former with C. fimbriata retained for the latter.

I have only seen one Matamata, other than those in zoos, and that was in the semi-wild state. During our trip to Guyana in 2006 we stayed for a couple of days at Rock View, a lodge in Annai on the Rupununi River, a tributary of the Essequibo. There in a large concrete tank lived a large Matamata which had been collected locally. The woman who looked after it climbed into the tank and lifted it out so that we could see and photograph it. This magnificent chelonian, which feeds  by sucking its prey into its mouth by a rapid expansion of the pharynx, was obviously of the newly described species, Chelus orinocensis.

Showing the location of Annai in Guyana. The Essequibo River reached the Atlantic to the north

  

Vargas-Ramírez M, Caballero S, Morales-Betancourt MA, Lasso CA, Amaya L, Martínez JG, Viana MS, Vogt RC, Farias IP, Hrbek T, Campbell PD, Fritz U. 2020. Genomic analyses reveal two species of the matamata (Testudines: Chelidae: Chelus spp.) and clarify their phylogeography, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution148, doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106823.

Sánchez-Villagra MR, Pritchard PCH, Paolillo A, Linares OJ. 1995. Geographic Variation in the Matamata Turtle, Chelus fimbriatus, with Observations on its Shell Morphology and Morphometry. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1, 294-300.

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Peter Dunn

I started to write this article a couple of days ago. That evening I found from Tim Melling a tribute on Flickr to Peter Dunn, the co-leader of that Naturetrek trip to Guyana, who had died earlier that day. Peter, a retired policeman from Scarborough, was well-known to birders in Yorkshire was well as to Naturetrek clients both as a leader and as compiler of those essential checklists. Our abiding memory is of Peter walking along a baking hot track wearing the Wellington Boots he had, after experience leading trips in Belize, wisely brought with him. With Flowers of Sulphur applied liberally to his thick socks he avoided the dreaded chiggers; the rest of the party did not.

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Peter Charles Howard Pritchard 1943-2020. An encyclopaedic knowledge of chelonians and their conservation. How did he start out?

The study and conservation of chelonians—turtles, terrapins and tortoises—has lost a major champion with the death on 25 February of Peter Pritchard at the age of 76. He and his Chelonian Research Institute were better known in the U.S.A. and the lands where chelonians breed than in his native United Kingdom. An appreciation of his work, influence and importance can be read on the website of Turtle Conservancy.

From Turtle Conservancy's website

   

I never met Peter Pritchard and often wondered how he had become interested in reptiles. Then I read an appreciation (on what is now a dead link) he had written of Angus d’Albini Bellairs (1918-1990):

Angus was the first herpetologist I ever met. He was the immediate successor to my father as Reader in Anatomy at St. Mary’s Hospital, my father (Dr. J. J. Pritchard*) having been appointed Professor of Anatomy at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland the preceding year, and this connection gave me free access to a man I regarded as an intellectual hero.  My (signed) copy of his 1957 book, simply named Reptiles, is dated April 5 1958, when I was just 14 years old, and just a few years later I started to write a book of my own, which I ambitiously entitled Living Turtles of the World.  Despite the clearly schoolboyish flavor of this early draft, not to mention the lack of personal field experience and shortage of library access, Angus introduced me to the concept of peer review (although we were not exactly peers), and he read the whole thing, making gentle suggestions in pencil wherever he saw fit. 

Whenever I was in London, I would find my way to the dusty chambers of St. Mary’s (made famous by Sir Alexander Fleming), and knock on Angus’ door for a conversation on the subject of mutual interest, namely herpetology.  At such times, he would always open a bottle of sherry and bring some small-size laboratory beakers from which we would drink it, as he urged me to pursue an experimental approach to herpetology, by means such as studying underwater respiration in softshell turtles, or scute regeneration in chelonians.  (Somehow, I never became “experimental”, instead concentrating on natural history, taxonomy, skeletal anatomy, and conservation aspects).

Angus also introduced me to other herpetologists, including Miss Grandison, the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, a lady who had seemed rather remote and doctrinaire when I wrote to her, but was more like a favorite auntie once encountered in person.  I was also privileged, through her, to meet J. C. Battersby, on his very last day before retiring in 1961; he had been a “boy attendant” of G. A. Boulenger, no less, appointed in 1916.

Angus introduced me to the bizarre militaristic hierarchies at the London Zoo (Regents’ Park), where the “gentlemen officers” (the Curators etc) lorded it over the non-commissioned ranks (head keepers and below), only the former being admitted to such places as the Fellows’ Restaurant.  He himself was, of course, “top of the heap,” a scholar and a gentleman, although unpaid in status as “honorary herpetologist,” and I think his extensive wartime military experience was what prompted him to refer to the Reptile House staff as his “sergeant major,” his “corporal,” etc… 

And that’s how it all began, although his interest in animals was first piqued by being taken as a small boy to London Zoo. Even though his first degree was in chemistry at Oxford, he moved to Florida to work for his Ph.D. with Archie Carr (1909-1987), the doyen of research and conservation of turtles.

The book Pritchard referred to was his Living Turtles of the World, published in 1967—when he was 24—by the infamous Herbert R. Axelrod’s TFH Publications. A completely rewritten survey of the world’s chelonians stretching to nearly 900 pages, also published by TFH, appeared as Encyclopedia of Turtles in 1979. Axelrod himself took a number of the photographs. I have a copy—still a useful reference—on my shelves.

The following video on, and including Peter Pritchard, appeared in 2016.

*Peter Pritchard’s father. John Joseph (Jack) Pritchard. was born in 1916 in Adelaide, South Australia. By the age of 19 he had a first degree and arrived in Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship to work at Oxford in the Department of Physiology. After becoming medically qualified in London he moved into anatomy, first at UCL, then St. Mary’s before moving to Belfast as Professor. His research was on bone growth and repair, a subject the reader will notice of considerable interest and importance in the life of chelonians. He died in 1979, aged 63.