The chelonians from the latest Miocene-earliest Pliocene locality of Allatini and Pylea (east Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece)

tDuring recent years, our knowledge of fossil turtles from northern Greece has improved,as a result of both the discovery and description of new specimens and the revision ofpreviously published material. The sites of Allatini and Pylea are among the classic LatestMiocene–Earliest Pliocene localities of northern Greece and have produced notable chelo-nian material. The purpose of this paper is to revise the previously published specimensfrom these sites and describe a new specimen of a turtle from Allatini. Taken together,these specimens constitute a diverse Macedonian chelonian assemblage, comprising a smalltortoise, a large tortoise and a turtle. Our results augment previous knowledge of the compo-sition of the Greek paleochelonofaunas in three main respects: first, they show that Testudoamiatae was not present in the Greek fossil record; second, they bring to light the earli-est mention of a giant tortoise in Greece; finally, they provide the most ancient confirmedrecord of a fossil geoemydid in Greece.