Cartoons often suggest turtles wear shells like removable armor. Those stories show turtles stepping out, swapping shells, or treating them like clothing. Biology disagrees. A turtle shell is not an ...

Every young boy has spent at least one afternoon digging a hole in the ground looking for some kind of treasure. An eight-year-old from South Africa was doing just that when he unearthed a turtle ...

The discovery, in China, of the oldest known turtle fossil has turned palaeontologists' understanding of the species' origin and ecology on its head. The fossil of Odontochelys semitestacea was found ...

The fossilized remains of a bizarre-looking reptile are giving scientists new insights into how turtles got their distinctive shells. Some 240 million years ago, this early turtle-like creature lived ...

Francis Horne, a biologist who studies shell formation at Texas State University, offers this answer. The exoskeletons of snails and clams, or their shells in common parlance, differ from the ...

How smushed shells could help to resolve paleontological mysteries. By Asher Elbein You never know where a bit of unusual scientific research is going to lead. Consider a 2012 study about turtle ...