A sea turtle’s shell is living bone fused directly to its spine and ribs. It is not a detachable shield or an external case, as certain quirky cartoons have shown. The shell grows with the turtle, ...

Ever consider the question of whether a turtle can truly pull its head into its shell like a cartoon representation in a children’s tale? The answer is far from being merely yes or no. As mentioned in ...

Sometimes animated turtles seem to live inside their shells like it’s a tiny home. They may even hop out of the shell and run around. That’s funny in cartoons and games, but my friend Ryan Wagner told ...

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 ...