the.com/leatherback
the dinosaur-era diver that mistakes plastic bags for the jellyfish it craves
means The leatherback is the largest living sea turtle, named for its leathery, ridged shell rather than the hard bony plates of other turtles.
from A transparent English compound of 'leather' and 'back,' describing the creature's most distinctive feature: a back covered not in armored scutes but in tough, rubbery, oil-saturated skin stretched over a mosaic of tiny bones. 'Leather' descends from Old English 'lether,' with cousins across the Germanic languages, while 'back' comes from Old English 'bæc.' The pairing is the kind of plain-spoken naming English does best — you see the animal, you describe what it's got on its back.
- deep diver
- plunges below 1,200 meters, deeper than most whales
- warm-blooded-ish
- generates body heat to swim in near-freezing water
- giant
- can weigh over 900 kilograms, no hard shell
- throat spines
- backward spikes trap slippery jellyfish prey
- ancient
- its lineage outlasted the dinosaurs by 100 million years
leatherback sea turtle — largest living turtle species, weighs up to 2,000 lbs, found in all tropical oceans
dermochelys coriacea — scientific name, only living member of family dermochelyidae, dives deeper than 4,000 feet