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 ...

Narrator: A turtle's shell is as much a part of its body as our rib cage is of ours. In fact, it is their rib cage, and their spine, and their vertebrae, and their sternum. Basically, a turtle's ...

The evolutionary history of turtles has always been a source of controversy in vertebrate palaeontology. When we give anatomy lectures at my university, we often tell students that “turtles might as ...

It’s a debate that’s left more than a few scientists shell-shocked: Just how did the turtle come to acquire its unique suit of armor? Some have insisted for decades that the turtle’s carapace evolved ...

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 ...