They tell many versions of the creation story of Turtle Island. Turtle Taxonomy Working Group (2017). Turtles of the World: Annotated Checklist and Atlas of Taxonomy, Synonymy, Distribution, and Conservation Status (PDF). Using the draft (unfinished) genome sequences of the inexperienced sea turtle and the Chinese softshell turtle, Zhuo Wang and colleagues (2013) concluded that turtles are seemingly a sister group of crocodilians and birds. In the Shang dynasty Chinese observe of plastromancy, courting back to 1200 BCE, oracles were obtained by inscribing questions on turtle plastrons using the oldest known form of Chinese characters, burning the plastron, and deciphering the ensuing cracks. It is supposedly of the species Chelys galactica, the galactic turtle, complete with 4 elephants on its back to assist Discworld. Lewis Carroll's 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland features a Mock Turtle, named for a soup meant to imitate the costly soup made from real turtle meat. The yoga pose Kurmasana is named for the avatar. The most recent common ancestor of residing turtles, corresponding to the break up between Pleurodira (aspect-necked species) and Cryptodira (hidden necked species), is estimated to have occurred round 210 million years in the past during the Late Triassic.
