Taken together, these anatomical differences mean that "Odontochelys" has some of the most primitive features ever seen in a turtle and is somewhat of a transitional fossil. Some scientists, however, are skeptical of this idea. Reisz and Head suggest that "Odontochelys" does not represent a turtle with a partly evolved shell, but that it is a descendant of an older, land–living turtle, and that the shell became reversed. Such shells can be seen on modern turtles, like the leatherback turtles (the genus "Dermochelys").
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