Turtle shells evolved over the course of 300 million years, but self-defense wasn't the initial driver, researchers think.

Do turtle shells actually consist of modified ribs? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. This weird-but-true claim went viral in mid-June 2021 when Twitter user and post-doctorate turtle expert Ceri ...

Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital has seen a surge of green sea turtles needing treatment for a mysterious disease that appears to "melt" their shells, causing lesions and open wounds on their shells ...

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 ...

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A tweet from a UCSD Postdoc went viral this month. Turtle expert Ceri Weber posted that a turtle's shell is actually not a shell at all, but rather a set of modified ribs. It's true ...

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 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, ...

The shells of chelonians—think turtles, tortoises, and sea turtles—grow in layers, keeping a time-stamped record of environmental conditions. Uranium has shown up in the layers of turtles’ and ...