Reptilia · Testudines
Natator depressusGarman, 1880
Flatback Turtle
Photograph by Lyndie Malan, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
An active by day or night, omnivorous turtle from the Marine region, reaching 96 cm across the shell.
Reptilia › Testudines › Cheloniidae › Natator
- Grows to
- 990mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 100years
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
- Data Deficient
- Population trend
- Unspecified
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Yellow
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 100years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 990mm3 ft 3 in
- Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- 960mm3 ft 2 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 74,400g164 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 75.25g2.7 oz
total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81
straight carapace length, measured in a line rather than over the curve
largely converted from length by allometry in the source
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Marine
- Habitat
- Wetlands
- Region
- Marine
Invertebrates, plants
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Average clutch
- 52.8eggs
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Garman
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1880
Keeping one
No enclosure size is given here
Sea turtles are not kept privately. Both standards cover them only for public aquaria, so no enclosure size is given here.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Flatback 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.
4198kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 74,400 g, the heaviest recorded for Flatback 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — 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
- — 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
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Cheloniidae
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). Natator depressus. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/natator-depressus
@misc{natator_depressus_2026,
title = {Natator depressus},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/natator-depressus}
}Sources
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- 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.