This is really too good not to share immediately. A recent study reports on numerous pairs of fossil turtle couples caught in the act of copulation. The sex den fossil sight is located in Germany and dates back to the Eocene.
How do they know this is male and female in a loving bond approved by the state of North Carolina? The size difference gives it away and males possess longer tails that extend past the shell.
And how do they know these turtles were amidst sweet, sweet love (also approved by the State of North Carolina but not discussed in polite Southern company)? The orientation of the male and female, the direct contact, and in two cases the tails of the male are wrapped below the shell of the female all point to turtle hanky panky. In general when male turtles intend to mate, they will wrap their tale, which contains their penis, around the females tails and eventually insert into her cloaca.
And lovers who perish mid coitus have a story
The preservation of mating pairs has important [implications], as it is unlikely that the turtles would mate in poisonous surface waters. Instead, the turtles initiated copulation in habitable surface waters, but perished when their skin absorbed poisons while sinking during [coitus] into toxic layers. The mating pairs..are therefore more consistent with a stratified, volcanic maar lake with inhabitable surface waters and a deadly abyss.
There you have it…the abyss is anti-turtle sex.
