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The Mary River turtle, native to Queensland, Australia, has the unusual ability to breathe underwater through specialized glands in its cloaca -- a posterior opening for excretion and reproduction.
Rikki Gumbs, a reptile biologist at Zoological Society London (ZSL), told CNN that because of the exotic pet trade in the 1960s and '70s, the turtles were often kept as pets and were already at risk of being endangered when they were first recognized as a species in the 1990s.
"The turtle takes a long time to reach sexual maturity, taking up to 25 to 30 years," he said. "As their vulnerability was discovered late, we lost a whole generation due to the pet trade and now their population has become very small."
The turtle comes in at No. 29 on the first list of its kind for reptiles, ZSL's register of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered creatures. The highest-ranking reptile is the Madagascar big-headed turtle, which is at risk due to human exploitation for food and trade. Joining them are the world's largest sea turtle, the leatherback, and the gharial, a crocodile found in the rivers of Nepal and northern India. Fewer than 250 gharials are still alive.
Sea turtles have lived for over 110 million years and are now considered to be endangered, relying on the work of conservationists to prevent their extinction over the next 50 years.