A joint research team from Cairo and New Valley universities succeeded in discovering the remains of a 70-million-year-old freshwater turtle in the city of Kharga in the New Valley in Western Desert.
The species was named Khargachelys carioensis, after the cities of Kharga, the largest in New Valley province, and Cairo, as the palaeontologists that made the discovery come from both cities.
The turtles all belong to the same previously undiscovered species, said Gebeily Aboul Kheir, assistant professor of paleontology at New Valley University and director of its vertebrate paleontology center.
Dr Aboul Kheir was part of the team that unearthed the fossils two years ago and recently shared their findings in a scientific journal. Since then, the team have been working on extracting the fossils from the outer layers of rock they are encased in.
The team, led by New Valley University president Dr Abdelaziz Tantawy, have hatched an ambitious plan to display the fossils in an open-air museum in Egypt’s Western Desert where they were discovered, but this requires state support and funding.
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