The Kemp's Ridley Turtel

Taxonomy
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Testudines
Family:	Cheloniidae
Genus:	Lepidochelys
Species:	Lepidochelys kempii

Status:	Critically Endangered

Kemp's Ridley turtles are one of the most seriously endangered of all sea turtles today. In 1947, a single Kemp's Ridley arribada was calculated as having 42,000 nests. Today, the total population of females is estimated to be around 2,500. They are listed as Critically Endangered (facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild in the immediate future) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Although Kemp's ridleys were often seen in the Gulf of Mexico and in the southeastern U.S., the location of their nesting beaches remained a mystery for many years. Turtle fishermen maintained that there were no nesting beaches because the Kemp's ridley was an infertile hybrid between a loggerhead and a hawksbill turtle.

The mystery was solved with the discovery of a film made in 1947 by a Mexican engineer. The film documented the mass emergence of tens of thousands of Kemp's ridley turtles in broad daylight onto a remote beach on the Gulf coast of Mexico. The beach was near Rancho Nuevo in the state of Tamaulipas about 300 kilometers (200 miles) south of Brownsville, Texas. The film showed the feverish activity of the females as they dug their nests and covered them. So many turtles were nesting at once that they climbed over each other and dug up each other's eggs.

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