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Its members are extinct and primitive forms of the thick-shelled reptiles, but true turtles, both of marine and fresh water, abound before the close of the Mesozoic. The sea-turtles attain an enormous size. Archelon, one of the primitive types, measured about twelve feet across the shell. Another was thirteen feet long and fifteen feet from one outstretched flipper to the other.
The largest of all known turtles, Archelon, whose home was the great interior Cretaceous sea, was fully a dozen feet in length and must have weighed at least two tons. The skull alone is a yard long. Lizards and snakes do not appear until after the close of the Mesozoic, although their ancestral lines may be followed back into the Cretaceous.
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