Plants 120 million years old turned out to be rare baby turtles (photo)

New research has revealed that two ancient plant fossils collected by a Colombian priest more than 50 years ago are actually rare turtles that hatched during the dinosaur era.

The fossils, which are 5 and 6 centimeters long, date back to the Aptian (125 million to 113 million years ago) and Cretaceous periods (145 million to 66 million years ago). These are the first sea turtles to hatch from that period in the northern part of South America, the Live Science newsletter writes.

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The discovery was "really amazing," said lead author Hector Palma-Castro, a student of paleobotany at the National University of Colombia.

Padre Gustavo Huertas collected the leafy fossils near the city of Villa de Leyva between 1950 and 1970 and later identified them as extinct plants. But the authors of the new study have now discovered that these are not leaves at all - they are tiny turtle shells.

The team determined that the fossils came from the upper shells of sea turtles. Based on the size and thickness of the shells and the growth patterns of living turtles, they concluded that the animals were less than a year old when they died.

"In fact, it's really rare for fossil turtles to hatch at all - when turtles are very young, the bones in their shells are very thin, so they can be easily destroyed," said study co-author Edwin Alberto Cadena, a paleontologist at the Rosario University in Bogotá.

The authors of the study write that the shells could have come from Desmatochelys padillai - the oldest sea turtle in history - found in the same fossilized sediments, but they could not be sure without a complete skeleton of the hatchlings.

As a reminder, archaeologists have shown a home of prehistoric people dating back almost 17 thousand years.

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