Techniques developed to study the distant past—from dating ancient artifacts to reconstructing climate records in ice cores—are now being repurposed to help us better understand the lives of modern ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sometimes animated turtles seem to live inside their shells like it’s a tiny home. They may even hop out of the shell and run around. That’s funny in cartoons and games, but my friend Ryan Wagner told ...

The sea creature arrived at San Diego's Birch Aquarium in 2014 Ingrid Vasquez is a Digital News Writer at PEOPLE. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor in Journalism.

A sea turtle’s shell is living bone fused directly to its spine and ribs. It is not a detachable shield or an external case, as certain quirky cartoons have shown. The shell grows with the turtle, ...