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Testudines · DermatemydidaeEntry 6,601 of 21,572
Central American River Turtle, Dermatemys mawii

Reptilia · Testudines

Dermatemys mawiiGray, 1847

Central American River Turtle

Photograph by Matěj Baťha, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

A water-living, nocturnal, plant-eating turtle from the Neotropic region, reaching 60 cm across the shell.

Reptilia › Testudines › Dermatemydidae › Dermatemys

Grows to
650mm
greatest recorded
Eats
Herbivorous
Active
Nocturnal
Lives up to
11.3years

What is known

30 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.

Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.

Standing in the world

Conservation status
Critically Endangered
Population trend
Decreasing

The animal itself

Colour on the back
Black, Brown
Pattern on the back
Uniform
Pupil
Round
Venomous
No
Fangs
None
Longest recorded life
11.3years
Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
27.75°C82 °F

mean body temperature of active individuals in nature

Size

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
650mm2 ft 2 in

total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81

Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
600mm23.5 in

straight carapace length, measured in a line rather than over the curve

Body mass · greatestcomputed
25,000g55 lb

largely converted from length by allometry in the source

Body mass · a typical adult
12,500g28 lb

AnAge rates this record "acceptable"

Body mass at hatching
40.8g1.4 oz

How it lives

Diet
Herbivorous

Plants

How it hunts
Active foraging
Active
Nocturnal
Where it lives
Aquatic
Habitat
Forest, Wetlands
Region
Neotropic
Highest it lives · above sea level
350m

Breeding

Reproduction
Oviparous
Sex decided by
Temperature
Average clutch
10eggs
Eggs or young per clutch
2–20eggs
Clutches in a year
5per year

Naming and history

Subspecies
No
Described by
Gray
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
1847

Keeping one

Central American River Turtle is assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.

No enclosure size is given here

The standard sets enclosure size for turtles and tortoises genus by genus, and this genus is not among the roughly sixty it lists. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different animal.

Active animals measured in the wild averaged 82 °F (27.8 °C).

Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.

Feeding

Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.

The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.

1592kJ per day

Worked out for an animal of 25,000 g, the heaviest recorded for Central American River Turtle — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.

An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.

What nobody knows

These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.

  • — Still living
  • — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
  • — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
  • — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
  • — Length snout to vent · adult mean
  • — Female length · mean, nose to tail
  • — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
  • — Length nose to tail · adult mean
  • — Largest female · snout to vent
  • — Largest male · snout to vent
  • — Largest female · shell length
  • — Largest male · shell length
  • — Hatchling length · snout to vent
  • — Hatchling length · nose to tail
  • — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
  • — Largest juvenile · shell length
  • — Egg length
  • — Egg width
  • — Body mass · adult female, mean
  • — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
  • — Eats arthropods
  • — Eats vertebrates
  • — Eats plant matter
  • — How the young develop
  • — Gestation or incubation
  • — Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • — Mean clutch · largest reported
  • — Clutches a year · fewest
  • — Clutches a year · most
  • — First breeds from · youngest recorded
  • — First breeds by · oldest recorded
  • — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
  • — Hatchling length · largest recorded
  • — Age at first breeding · female
  • — Mature from · youngest recorded
  • — Mature by · oldest recorded
  • — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
  • — Size at maturity · largest recorded
  • — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
  • — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
  • — Limbs
  • — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
  • — Red List criteria
  • — Biome
  • — Active season · shortest recorded
  • — Active season · longest recorded
  • — Density · lowest recorded
  • — Density · highest recorded
  • — Home range · largest recorded
  • — Suborder
  • — Infraorder
  • — Type locality
  • — Active in
  • — Mainland or island
  • — Lowest it lives · above sea level
  • — Range size

Take this data

Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.

This species as JSON · the whole dataset

Cite this page

The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Dermatemys mawii. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dermatemys-mawii

@misc{dermatemys_mawii_2026,
  title  = {Dermatemys mawii},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/dermatemys-mawii}
}

Sources

  1. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
  3. Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
  4. AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.