Loggerhead turtles take almost half a century to reach maturity, say scientists.
A female turtle, the researchers report in the journal Functional Ecology, will not start to lay eggs until she is 45.
This estimate, based on examination of several decades of data on the turtles' growth, has implications for conservation efforts.
It reveals how long it takes for turtles hatched at a protected nesting site to return to that site to breed.
Prof Graeme Hays from the University of Swansea, one of the authors of the study, explained how reaching maturity so slowly meant that the turtle population was "less resilient" than previously thought.
"The longer an animal takes to reach maturity, the more vulnerable the population is to [man-made] causes of mortality," said Prof Hays.
This, he explained, was because there was a much higher chance of an individual animal being killed - for example, by being deliberately or accidentally caught in a fishing net - before it had been able to "replace itself" by breeding.
It is, however, extremely difficult to follow the life cycle of a sea turtle. These long-lived marine reptiles are impossible track as they drift through thousands of kilometres of ocean, spending the vast majority of their time underwater.
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature
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