Techniques developed to study the distant past—from dating ancient artifacts to reconstructing climate records in ice cores—are now being repurposed to help us better understand the lives of modern ...

Sea turtle shells record life history layer by layer over many years, clearly revealing diet, stress, movement, and ocean ...

Learn how researchers use archaeological techniques to show how sea turtle shells grow in layers that capture chemical clues about diet, movement, and ocean change over time.

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 ...

It would be a memorable sight. But it would also be so wrong to tip over Galápagos giant tortoises to see how shell shape affects their efforts to leg-pump, neck-stretch and rock right-side up again.

Shell integration typically involves 50 to 60 individual bones fusing into a permanent structural cage. The carapace creates a mechanical constraint that prevents the chest from expanding during ...