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.

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 ...

The turtle’s shell provides it with a formidable defence and one that is unique in the animal world. No other animal has a structure quite like it, and the bizarre nature of the turtle’s anatomy also ...

Of the modern turtle’s many distinct features, nothing stands out more than its iconic shell. But paleontologists have discovered a 228 million-year-old fossilized turtle that is not only missing its ...

There are a couple of key features that make a turtle a turtle: its shell, for one, but also its toothless beak. A newly-discovered fossil turtle that lived 228 million years ago is shedding light on ...

The evolutionary history of turtles has always been a source of controversy in vertebrate palaeontology. When we give anatomy lectures at my university, we often tell students that “turtles might as ...

A recent tragedy occurred in Indian River County, Florida when an elderly man tried to save a turtle. The reptile was slowly creeping across I-95 when an 87-year-old Vermont native attempted to help ...

Paleobiologists from the University of Zurich have discovered exceptional specimens in Venezuela and Colombia of an extinct giant freshwater turtle called Stupendemys. The carapace of this turtle, ...

There are a couple of key features that make a turtle a turtle: its shell, for one, but also its toothless beak. A newly-discovered fossil turtle that lived 228 million years ago is shedding light on ...

The fossilized remains of a bizarre-looking reptile are giving scientists new insights into how turtles got their distinctive shells. Some 240 million years ago, this early turtle-like creature lived ...

Paleobiologists have discovered exceptional specimens in Venezuela and Colombia of an extinct giant freshwater turtle called Stupendemys. The carapace of this turtle, which is the largest ever known, ...