The Development of Systematic Reviews of the Turtles of the World

Abstract

Turtles are one of nature’s most immediately recognizable life forms. They are an ancient group of vertebrateswith a rich fossil history whose natural limits have long been recognized by naturalists. Indeed, the monophylyof this order has never been seriously questioned. The use of turtles and their eggs as food and for medicinaland ceremonial purposes has made them of importance to mankind since prehistoric times. As such, cheloniansfigured prominently in the earliest museum collections, all of them privately owned, including that of the Ital-ian physician and encyclopedist of nature, Ulisse Aldrovandi of Bologna, in the late 16th century and the collec-tions amassed in Amsterdam by the wealthy pharmacist and amateur naturalist, Albertus Seba, early in the 18thcentury. The first books devoted exclusively to turtles were on their anatomy. Giovanni Caldesi, physician tothe last grand duke of Tuscany, and Christoph Gottwald, a physician and collector of natural history curiositiesin Danzig, published their treatises on chelonian morphology in 1687 and 1781, respectively, the latter beingissued eight decades after Gottwald’s death. Neither author, however, provided a comprehensive review of theworld’s turtles.