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, ...

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 ...

One hundred thousand years ago, a human cousin walked a rock- ribbed beach along the Mediterranean Sea, her head lowered and her large eyes scanning the shoreline. Now and again she stopped, bent her ...

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. Sea turtles don’t just ...

Researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School have developed a method to read the chemical layers inside sea turtle shells like a biological stopwatch, reconstructing years of an animal’s ...