Fossilised turtle shells plucked from a Polish rubbish dump have been judged to be the oldest and most complete palaeontologists have yet discovered. Dating back 215million years, experts say the ...

Turtle shells evolved over the course of 300 million years, but self-defense wasn't the initial driver, researchers think.

The unearthing of three 220m-year-old fossils in China has solved the enduring mystery of how the turtle got its shell. The ancient remains are the first evidence palaeontologists have of a species of ...

A living South African sideneck turtle next to its 260 million year old relative, Eunotosaurus africanus (Luke Norton) Scientists have found out how turtle shells evolved - and that the process began ...

'Largest turtle that ever existed' weighed more than a tonne and had an eight-foot horned shell that it may have used for fighting other turtles 10 million years ago. Palaeontologists from the ...

An extinct giant turtle had a horned shell up to three metres big that it may have used for combat, scientists say. Five to 10 million years ago, what is today a desert area in Venezuela was a humid ...

Scientists have discovered remains of a rare kind of turtle, one that lived over 228 million years ago in the Triassic era and had no shell – the most common feature of present-day turtles. The nearly ...

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 ...

When we picture sea turtles in the wild, it’s easy to envision them as armored warriors – their hard, resilient shells serving as near-impenetrable shields against oceanic threats like sharks. These ...

Scientists have revealed a spectacular insight into turtle evolution - how the unique animals get their shells. A Japanese team studied the development of turtle embryos to find out why their ribs ...