In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact – although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...

In today's turtles the shell has a key protective function. The animals can withdraw into it and protect themselves against predators. No other group of vertebrates has modified its physique to such ...

Turtle shells didn’t get their start as natural armor, it seems. The reptiles’ ancestors might have evolved partial shells to help them burrow instead, new research suggests. Only later did the hard ...

"They show now how developmental steps [in the turtle] could have led to this initial formation" of the turtle's shell. In addition to the overt peculiarity of the turtle's shell, or carapace -- which ...

Of the modern turtle’s many distinct features, nothing stands out more than its iconic shell. But paleontologists have discovered a 228 million-year-old fossilized turtle that is not only missing its ...

It's a long-held idea that turtles can tuck their heads into their shells when threatened. But is it true? And is this protective trick why turtles the world over have shells today? The answer is that ...

Hans-Dieter Sues - Curator, Paleontology, National Museum of Natural History In a fit of pique, according to one of Aesop's fables, the god Hermes made the animal carry its house forever on its back.

In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact — although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...