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 ...

The turtle has been in no rush to give up the secret of its shell — but after two centuries of close study, scientists are filling in the story of a structure unique in the history of life.New ...

Francis Horne, a biologist who studies shell formation at Texas State University, offers this answer. The exoskeletons of snails and clams, or their shells in common parlance, differ from the ...

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 ...