A 260 million-year-old fossil has been determined to be the oldest ancestor of turtles found to date, revealing something about the reptile's mysterious past. Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, ...

Sea turtle shells record life history layer by layer over many years, clearly revealing diet, stress, movement, and ocean ...

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.

Learn how researchers use archaeological techniques to show how sea turtle shells grow in layers that capture chemical clues ...

In the past decade, scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of two prehistoric turtles that had a partial shell, but that lacked the toothless beak of modern turtles. Recently, however, a ...

Modern turtles are synonymous with the shells that serve as protection from predators, but a recently discovered fossil from close to 230 million years ago suggests that the animals didn’t always have ...

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 ...

A new fossil discovered by researchers might leave fans of turtles a little shell-shocked. A study published in the journal Nature finds a fossil from a turtle roaming Earth 228 million years ago had ...

Shell integration typically involves 50 to 60 individual bones fusing into a permanent structural cage. The carapace creates a mechanical constraint that prevents the chest from expanding during ...

It's a long-held idea that turtles can tuck their heads into their shells when threatened. But is it true? And is this protective trick why turtles the world over have shells today? The answer is that ...