New "tissue clock" technique reconstructs sea turtle life histories from shell chemistryMIAMI — Techniques developed to study the distant past—from ...

Every young boy has spent at least one afternoon digging a hole in the ground looking for some kind of treasure. An eight-year-old from South Africa was doing just that when he unearthed a turtle ...

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 ...

On a warm morning in Virginia, a wildlife researcher walks slowly through a patchwork of forest and farmland, eyes scanning the ground for something most people would never notice. Somewhere under ...

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 ...

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 ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Imagine that Labradors and golden retrievers died out a million years ago, leaving only fossilized skeletons behind. Without the help of DNA, how could we determine that a fossil ...

From which ancestors have turtles evolved? How did they get their shell? New data provides evidence that turtles are not primitive reptiles but belong to a sister group of birds and crocodiles. The ...

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 ...