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 ...

The turtle's shell provides it with a formidable defence and one that is unique in the animal world. No other animal has a structure quite like it, and the bizarre nature of the turtle's anatomy also ...

Hans-Dieter Sues - Curator, Paleontology, National Museum of Natural History In a fit of pique, according to one of Aesop's fables, the god Hermes made the animal carry its house forever on its back.

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 ...

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 ...