(Photo courtesy of Victor Leshyk)

An artist’s depiction of the turtle Arvinachelys goldeni as it would have appeared in life 76 milion years ago in southern Utah.

(Photo courtesy of Natural History Museum)

Snout view of the skull of the fossil turtle.

A fossil discovered in southern Utah adds a turtle with a pig nose to the list of animals that roamed with the dinosaurs.

The Golden’s bacon turtle gets the “bacon” part of its name from its pig-like snout. Scientists found a nearly complete fossil in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

Paleontologist Joshua Lively describes the now-extinct species in a paper published last week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. “There is really no other turtle, fossil or modern, that has a snout that looks like this,” he said. “It is very unique.”

The two-foot long turtle had a broad nose with distinct nostrils separated by bone. Other turtle noses have a single opening with a fleshy division instead.

The Golden’s bacon turtle lived during the Cretaceous Period, 76 million years ago. The first part of its name honors Jerry Golden, a volunteer at the Natural History Museum of Utah who prepared the fossil for display.

Lively doesn’t yet know why the turtle had a pig-like nose, or how the species went extinct. He said more specimens are needed to answer those questions.

A CT scan of Arvinachelys goldeni’s skull. Most ancient turtle species’ fossil remains consist of nothing more than an isolated skull or shell. The new specimen includes both the skull and the shell, thereby filling an important gap in understanding the evolution of turtles. (Video by Joshua Lively)