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Anatomy of the Leatherback Turtle | |||
| Believe it or not, but the Leatherback sea turtle is the world's largest reptile. The carapace, or upper shell, can grow to more than 2 m in length, and the turtle can weigh more than 500 kg. This makes the Leatherback sea turtle to the biggest of all the sea turtles. Some have even tipped the scales at 900 kg. |  | ||
 | One way it's different from the other sea turtles is it lacks scutes and scales and instead has a leathery carapace with prominent longitudinal ridges. The skin covers a thick layer of oil-saturated fat and connective tissue and a matrix of small bony plates that fit together, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, to form the shell. | ||
| Like other sea turtles, the Leatherback, cannot retract its head or flippers under its shell, making head and flippers very vulnerable to attach from predators. | |||
| On the flippers we can see another major difference from the other sea turtle species. The Leatherback doesn't have any claws on their flippers. On the other species you'll normal see one or two claws on the flippers. |  | 1 2 | |
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