A half-shell turtle species that swam in China's coastal waters 220 million years ago is the oldest turtle known to date, a new analysis of fossils reveals. The turtle had a belly shell, but its back ...

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 ...

The turtle’s shell is unique, but the evolution of the structure has been a mystery. Now Japanese scientists have figured out that the shell develops from an unusual folding process inside the egg ...

Turtles are reptiles with hard shells that protect them from predators. They are among the oldest and most primitive groups of reptiles, having evolved millions of years ago. Turtles live all over the ...

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 ...

On a spring day in 1978, a fisherman caught a tiger shark in the lagoon surrounding Enewetak Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the north Pacific. That shark, along with the remains of a green sea ...