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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Scroll long enough, and you will see barnacles portrayed all over social media as ocean troublemakers. People violently scrape them off ship hulls and sea turtles like they are the problem. In reality ...

Two years ago, physicists at the University of Chicago were greeted with fireworks—atoms shooting out in jets—when they discovered a new form of quantum behavior. But the patterns underlying the ...

While the most famous wildlife in Austin is undoubtedly the colony of bats living under the Congress Avenue Bridge, paddling below that bridge is another conspicuous animal that deserves more ...

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 ...

Do you collect souvenirs when you travel? If you’re anything like me you have shelf after shelf of mementos from your sojourns in all shapes and sizes – some novel, some deeply sentimental, and some ...

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 ...