Elseya uberrima is a Pliocene species of extinct Australian snapping turtle.
Taxonomy During his time at the Queensland Museum, Charles Walter De Vis described a number of fossil turtles from the Darling Downs region of Queensland, Australia.Thomson SA. 2000. A Revision of the Fossil Chelid Turtles (Pleurodira) Described by C.W. De Vis, 1897. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 45 (2): 593–598. (Brisbane). All four species described were declared a single diagnosable species by Thomson, 2000.
To avoid confusion, the synonymy for the species is:
Elseya uberrima (De Vis, 1897De Vis CW. 1897. The extinct freshwater turtles of Queensland. Annals of the Queensland Museum 3: 3–7.) Chelymys uberrima De Vis, 1897: 3 Chelymys antiqua De Vis 1897: 4 Chelymys arata De Vis 1897: 5 Pelocomastes ampla De Vis 1897: 6–7
This synonymy has made the generic name Pelocomastes a junior synonym of Elseya, and in their recent revision of that genus, Thomson et al. (2015)Thomson, S., Amepou, Y., Anamiato, J. & Georges, A. 2015. A new species and subgenus of Elseya (Testudines: Pleurodira: Chelidae) from New Guinea. Zootaxa 4006(1):59–82. Preview (PDF) resurrected Pelocomastes as a subgenus to represent the Queensland clade of the Elseya. Therefore, Elseya (Pelocomastes) uberrima is the type species for this subgenus.
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