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 ...

"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 ...

Francis Horne, a biologist who studies shell formation at Texas State University, offers this answer. The exoskeletons of snails and clams, or their shells in common parlance, differ from the ...