I'd go with the rocklike endurance to get them through. I've just checked 'Turtles of the World' and the 'Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians (Eastern/Central North America)', and the most northerly/coldest weather turtles are probably those living in Ontario and the Canadian Prairies. Nothing chelonian in the true Arctic, around Hudson's Bay, etc. Apparently nothing even that tough in Asia, though it was hard to tell with the sketchy maps in the first reference. Painted turtles and snappers are about as tough as they get. All books on keeping turtles in garden ponds recommend a minimum depth of 1m water, more if possible. That the water should not freeze to the bottom is the key point.
Pushing the rock ancestry a little further, what about the softshelled turtles/sliders/painted turtles, etc. (flatter-shelled, and aquatic) being derived from sedimentary rocks (usually laid down in water), and the higher-domed, boxier types found in many hot, dry climates derived from metamorphic/igneous boulders? Wouldn't want to look at the earth analogy too hard (plenty of exceptions), but might be fun for Glorantha.
"About turtles, you are a realist and a
disillusionist. You must assume Earthly dinosaurs had
been all poikilotherms and cannot live in cold
climate, no Jurassic Park.....:-)", to which Andrew
added that poikilotherm was one of his favourite
words.
Also OT, Andrew, it may amuse you that 'poikilotherm' was one of the key words in a 1st-yr university bio lab that I helped one of my friends mark about 15 years ago. We counted, out of a sample of approximately 60 students, 36 *different* misspellings! We kept a list, which Dorothy posted in the next lab.
"In Earth, bison, impala, high llama and sable cannot
live in same climate. (So Greg said.)"
Well, didn't or don't live in the same climate, that's true. However, saying they couldn't is stretching it. Bison can take heat, and do. High llamas were found in roughly the same environment as bison are now, and browsed on high tree foliage just as their present day distant artiodactyl giraffe relatives do. I'd grant you that impalas would have trouble foraging in heavy snow, but I'd bet that sables could manage. So finding all these spp in Prax, with hot summers and minimal winter snow cover (and that mostly up north) is not out of the question. More of a problem is mixing a tree browser in with the three grazers. You have to assume more acacia-like trees available than I usually have, or more browsing by the high llamas. A silly side note - info on Alticamelus comes from one of my favourite cases of nominative determinism, 'Mammal Evolution', by Savage and Long.
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