The upper part of the shell is olive-brown, and the lower part is yellowish. The carapace is moderately depressed, displaying a vertebral keel in the young, which disappears in adults. The plastron is large, strongly angulate laterally in the young, convex in adults, truncated at the front, and angularly notched at the back. The width of the bridge is greater than the length of the posterior lobe. The head is relatively small, with a pointed, upward-directed snout, and denticulated edges on the jaws. Limbs have transversely enlarged, band-like scales.