...Colm Murphy; Denis Kelliher; John Davenport SUMMARY The leatherback turtle regularly undertakes deep dives and has been recorded attaining depths in excess of 1200 m. Its trachea is an almost solid, elliptical-section tube of uncalcified hyaline cartilage with minimal connective tissue between...

... for correspondence ( j.davenport@ucc.ie ) 16 7 2011 © 2011. 2011 leatherback turtle feeding shape change girth Chelonians arose 210–230 million years ago (MYA) during the late Triassic as heavily armoured terrestrial forms, though all turtle species alive at present (terrestrial as well...

... leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea . J. Mar. Biol. Assoc. UK 78 , 953 - 972 . Bramble D. M. , Wake D. B. ( 1985 ). Feeding mechanisms of lower tetrapods . In Functional Vertebrate Morphology (ed. Hildebrand M. , Bramble D. M. , Liem K. F. , Wake D. B. ), pp...

.... Material was collected from two freshly stranded adult leatherback turtles. The first turtle (Specimen 1) was found close to the shore at Ballycotton,East Cork. A female, it was 168 cm in standard curved carapace length, so would have weighed around 450 kg (see Georges and Fossette, 2006 ). The head...

...John Davenport; John Fraher; Edward Fitzgerald; Patrick McLaughlin; Tom Doyle; Luke Harman; Tracy Cuffe SUMMARY Adult leatherback turtles are gigantothermic/endothermic when foraging in cool temperate waters, maintaining a core body temperature within the main body cavity of ca . 25°C despite...

... electronic archival tags to investigate the bioenergetics and diving activity of reproductive adult female leatherback turtles Dermochelys coriacea . Mean dive durations (7.8±2.4 min (±1 s . d .), bottom times (2.7±0.8 min), and percentage of time spent in water temperatures ( T w ) ≤24°C(9.5±5.7%) increased...

... that recorded the electrocardiogram and the depth and duration of dives were deployed on six female leatherback turtles as they laid eggs at Playa Grande, Costa Rica. Turtles dived continually for the majority of the internesting interval and spent 57–68 % of the time at sea submerged. Mean dive depth was 19±1...