Public Domain photo
Terrapene carolina putnami is, as far as we know, extinct. So we don’t know too terribly much about it. But it left behind many fossils, mostly across the southeastern United States. This lets us figure out some things about how and where it lived.
O. P. Hay first described this animal in 1906, based on a partial fossil given to him by Professor F. W. Putnam of the American Museum of Natural History. Hay then named it putnami, for the professor.
At the time, Hay named it as a new species, T. putnami (no c.). But today it is considered a subspecies of T. carolina.
Unlike other box turtle species, it is known only by its scientific name. It has no common name.
What T. c. putnami Looked Like
This was a very big box turtle. Based on the fossil fragments, it was probably around 10.5 inches long.
Of course, it had the distinctive hinge of all box turtles. So it could close itself up against danger.
Since it’s only known from fossils, we can’t be sure what markings it may have had.
But there’s evidence to suggest that T. c. major (the Gulf Coast Box Turtle) may actually be a mix of the Eastern Box Turtle and T. c. putnami. So it’s possible this extinct box turtle looked similar to today’s Gulf Coast box turtles.
Where and How Terrapene carolina putnami Lived
Remains of T. c. putnami have been found across a large part of the US, from southern South Carolina down through Florida, west into eastern New Mexico and north into Kansas.
The original fossil described by O. P. Hay was found in the Alifia River, near Tampa Bay in Florida.
It most likely favored marshy areas, similar to the kind of place its T. carolina cousins like to live today. This kind of environment provides lots of hiding areas and high humidity; two things box turtles love and need.
And they probably ate things similar to today’s box turtles too. In other words, approximately equal amounts of meat (mostly insects) and plants.
Sources
If you’re interested, you can read O.P. Hay’s original paper, Descriptions of two new genera (Echmatemys and Xenochely) and two new species (Xenochelys formosa and Terrapene putnami) of fossil turtles in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History Vol. 22 (1906) Pgs. 27-31.
(the View/Open link on this page opens a PDF of the article. You can view it for free and without an account).
Also:
Davis, L. C., J. G. Scoggins, and J. A. Holman. Large Pleistocene Box Turtle from Southwest Arkansas. Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science, Vol. 54 (2000). Pgs 147-149. (Link opens a PDF)
Butler, J.M., C. K. Dodd, Jr., M. Aresco, J. D. Austin. (2011) Morphological and molecular evidence indicates that the Gulf Coast box turtle (Terrapene carolina major) is not a distinct evolutionary lineage in the Florida Panhandle. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. Abstract.