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 ...

Rudyard Kipling seems to have covered the bases with his “Just So” stories: how the camel got its hump, how the rhino got its skin, how the leopard got its spots. But it seems that he forgot one. How ...

A half-shell turtle species that swam in China's coastal waters 220 million years ago is the oldest turtle known to date, a new analysis of fossils reveals. The turtle had a belly shell, but its back ...

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 ...

When Ann Berry Somers was 7 years old and growing up in North Carolina, she encountered a box turtle on a path. She picked up the small reptile and looked into its eyes. Instead of retreating into its ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. A newly discovered early turtle fossil from ...