Painted turtle

There's a small, lily-covered pond in the wetlands on my campus. This morning while walking by I saw a brightly colorful turtle sunbathing on a rock in the pond. After some Google-ing, I've identified it as being an Eastern Painted Turtle Chrysemys picta picta. [Photographs][Closeup]

FYI:
The painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) is the most widely distributed North American turtle, and the only one to range across the entire continent, occurring from southern Canada to northern Mexico and from the northwestern to the southeastern United States. They are small turtles with an adult carapace length of 4-10 inches (10-25 cm). The carapace is a smooth, flattened oval, and is green to black in color, with red markings in some sub-species. The plastron[*] is generally yellow, sometimes tinged with red, sometimes with a black to reddish-brown figure of varying size and shape. The skin of the painted turtle is black to olive with red and yellow stripes on the neck, legs and tail and yellow stripes on the head. Males have elongated foreclaws and long, thick tails. Females have shorter foreclaws, shorter and thinner tails, and tend to be larger.

The eastern painted turtle, C. p. picta (Schneider, 1783), ranges from southeast Canada through New England and down to Georgia and eastern Alabama. It is usually 5-7 inches (12.7-17.8 cm) long, and the record is 7.1 inches. This turtle is unique in that the vertebral and costal scutes run virtually parallel, so the light bordered seams are aligned across the carapace. On all other North American turtles, the seams alternate. The plastron is usually plain yellow. In the coastal portions of its range, it may be found in brackish tidal waters.

Sources:

1. Cohen, M., 1992, The Painted Turtle, Chrysemys picta, Tortuga Gazette 28(10): 1-3
   
2. Knipper, K., 2002, Chrysemys picta, Animal Diversity Web (accessed September 03, 2004)

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Fun fact: Terrapin is a term of Algonquin Indian origin applied to several edible North American turtles living in fresh or brackish water!

Mmmmmm....turtle