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Testudines · ChelidaeEntry 7,535 of 21,572
Mary River Turtle, Elusor macrurus

Reptilia · Testudines

Elusor macrurusCann & Legler, 1994

Mary River Turtle

Photograph by Marilyn Connell, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons

A water-living, active by day or night, omnivorous turtle from the Australo-Pacific region, reaching 50 cm across the shell.

Reptilia › Testudines › Chelidae › Elusor

Grows to
400mm
greatest recorded
Eats
Omnivorous
Active
Cathemeral
Lives up to
30years
Body length across Chelidae

Longer than 88% of all species in Chelidae anyone has measured.

88% of 42 species are smaller12% larger
155 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest500 mm

The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 155 to 500 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.

What is known

25 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
Endangered
Population trend
Unspecified

The animal itself

Colour on the back
Brown, Red
Pattern on the back
Blotched
Pupil
Round
Venomous
No
Fangs
None
Longest recorded life
30years

Size

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
400mm15.5 in

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

Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
500mm19.5 in

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

Largest juvenile · shell length
35mm1.5 in
Body mass · greatestcomputed
6067g13 lb

largely converted from length by allometry in the source

How it lives

Diet
Omnivorous

Amphibians, birds, invertebrates, fish, plants

How it hunts
Active foraging
Active
Cathemeral
Where it lives
Aquatic
Habitat
Wetlands
Region
Australo-Pacific
Highest it lives · above sea level
15m

Breeding

Reproduction
Oviparous
Average clutch
15

an average — Connell, 2018. Freshwater turtle assemblages of the Mary River (Queensland, Australia), with a focus on the population of the endangered Elusor macrurus. Master's thesis, Charles Darwin University, 154 p.

Naming and history

Subspecies
No
Described by
Cann & Legler
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
1994

Keeping one

Mary River Turtle is assessed as 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.

No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Mary River Turtle. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.

Feeding

A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.

Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.

452kJ per day

Worked out for an animal of 6,067 g, the heaviest recorded for Mary 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
  • — Egg length
  • — Egg width
  • — Body mass · a typical adult
  • — Body mass · adult female, mean
  • — Body mass at hatching
  • — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
  • — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
  • — Eats arthropods
  • — Eats vertebrates
  • — Eats plant matter
  • — How the young develop
  • — Gestation or incubation
  • — Smallest clutch recorded
  • — Largest clutch recorded
  • — Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • — Mean clutch · largest reported
  • — Clutches in a year
  • — 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
  • — Sex decided by
  • — 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

Others in Chelidae

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). Elusor macrurus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elusor-macrurus

@misc{elusor_macrurus_2026,
  title  = {Elusor macrurus},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/elusor-macrurus}
}

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. 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.
  3. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.