Sichuanchelyidae is a family of extinct in the clade Testudinata. It includes all Perichelydia that are more closely related to Sichuanchelys than Meiolania, Helochelydra, or any extant turtles.
Systematics
The family Sichuanchelyidae was originally created to accommodate the Middle
Jurassic Chinese turtle
Sichuanchelys, and it was considered
Monotypic taxon until Joyce et al. (2016) recovered the problematic Late Cretaceous turtle
Mongolochelys from Mongolia as a close relative of
Sichuanchelys.
[H. Tong, I. Danilov, Y. Ye, H. Ouyang, and G. Peng. 2012. Middle Jurassic turtles from the Sichuan Basin, China: a review. Geological Magazine 149(4):675-695][W. G. Joyce, M. Rabi, J. M. Clark and X. Xu. 2016. A toothed turtle from the Late Jurassic of China and the global biogeographic history of turtles. BMC Evolutionary Biology 16(236):1-29] The late Paleocene form
Laurasichersis from Europe is the youngest sichuanchelyid, showing that stem turtles in Laurasia outlived the Mesozoic.
