Colossochelys atlas, formerly known as Testudo atlas, and originally described as Geochelone atlas, is an extinct species of cryptodire

Cryptodira

Cryptodira is the taxonomic suborder of Testudines that includes most living tortoises and turtles. Cryptodira differ from Pleurodira in that they lower their necks and pull the heads straight back into the shells; instead of folding their necks sideways along the body under the shells' margins...

 turtle

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...

 from the Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 period, about 2 million years ago. During the dry glacial periods it ranged from western India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 (possibly even as far west as southern and eastern Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

) to as far east as Sulawesi

Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

 and Timor

Timor

Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...

 in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

.
Other members of the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Testudinidae are generally small (7 – long). C. atlas is the largest known member of the family, with a shell length of about 2.1 metres (6.9 ft), an estimated total length of 2.5 to 2.7 m (8.2 to 8.9 ft) and an approximate total height of 1.8 metres (5.9 ft). Weight estimates vary greatly: some go as high as 3 to 4 metric tonnes (= 3000 to 4000 kilograms), but a weight of around 1 metric tonne (1000 kilograms) is probably more realistic (Paul and Leahy, 1994). The only bigger turtles were the ocean

Ocean

An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...

ic Archelon

Archelon

Archelon is a genus of extinct sea turtle, the largest that has ever been documented.-Discovery:...

 and Protostega

Protostega

Protostega gigas is an extinct species of marine turtle. It was first collected from the Smoky Hill Chalk of western Kansas in 1871, and named by E.D. Cope...

 from the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

 period. Colossochelys atlas probably looked similar to a giant Galápagos tortoise

Galápagos tortoise

The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise is the largest living species of tortoise, reaching weights of over and lengths of over . With life spans in the wild of over 100 years, it is one of the longest-lived vertebrates...

.

Like the modern Galápagos tortoise, Colossochelys atlass weight was supported by four elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

ine feet. Since most members of the related genus Testudo are herbivore

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

s, paleontologists

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

presume C. atlas had the same diet. When a predator threatened it, C. atlas could probably retract its limbs and head into its shell, just like its modern relatives.