Reptiles, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 20, 2017

54-Million-Year-Old Baby Sea Turtle Had Built-In Sunscreen

An extraordinarily well-preserved fossil of a baby sea turtle that lived 54 million years ago contains traces of dark pigments that would have acted as built-in sunscreen, protecting the animal from the sun's harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The specimen, which is among the best-preserved fossils of sea turtles in the...

Nov 25, 2017

The Secret to Turtle Hibernation: Butt-Breathing

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. To breathe or not to breathe, that is the question. What would happen if you were submerged in a pond where the water temperature hovered just above freezing and...

Apr 16, 2018

Punk-Rock Turtle Has 'Green Hair,' Will Probably Die Alone

The Mary River turtle doesn't take its name from '80s alt-rock icons The Jesus and Mary Chain, though we wouldn't fault you for the guess. With whisker-like growths forking out of its chin and shocks of algae bursting off of its head like a punky green mohawk, the freshwater swimmer...

Aug 21, 2018

113 Dead Sea Turtles Washed Up on a Mexico Beach, and No One Knows Why

Over a period of less than three weeks, more than 100 endangered sea turtles washed up dead on an 18-mile (30 kilometers) stretch of beach on the Pacific coast of Mexico near Guatemala, and authorities aren't sure why. The mass mortality event began on July 24, when 26 dead turtles...

Sep 20, 2018

Rare Footage Shows Beautiful Orcas Toying with Helpless Sea Turtles

A small pod of orcas (Orcinus orca) near the Galápagos Islands was caught on camera as they pushed, spun and dragged sea turtles around as if the turtles were pool toys. Orcas are known to play with their food before eating, but this was likely the first time they've been...

Dec 3, 2018

How Butt Gas, Drugs and Amazing Memories Led to This Weird Turtle Photo

The ancient cosmologers were right and Galileo was wrong: This turtle's got the whole freaking world on its back. Live Science saw the above photo circulating on Twitter early last week and reached out to its originators — the good folks at Task Force Turtle — to get the full...

Feb 7, 2019

'Oldest' Case of Bone Cancer Is Diagnosed in a 240-Million-Year-Old Shell-Less Turtle

Hundreds of millions of years ago, a shell-less turtle developed a malady in its bones. Now, 240 million years later, the Triassic period turtle is finally receiving a diagnosis: bone cancer. This is likely the oldest case of bone cancer ever found among reptiles, birds and mammals, according to the...

Apr 15, 2019

World's Rarest Giant Turtle Loses Last Known Female, All But Guaranteeing Extinction

The Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) is considered the most critically endangered turtle in the world, with only four known individuals left on Earth. On Saturday (April 13), that population fell to three, as the species' last known female died in a zoo in Suzhou, China, according to the...

Oct 4, 2019

Depressing Image Shows Dead Baby Sea Turtle Found with 104 Pieces of Plastic in Its Belly

A photo of a baby loggerhead sea turtle that died after eating 104 pieces of plastic went viral on Facebook this week. The photo was posted by the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Florida, on Tuesday (Oct. 1) and shows the lifeless turtle, no bigger than the palm...

Jan 28, 2020

Green turtle rescued from fishing net poops out all kinds of human trash

The phrase what goes in … must come out took on a literal meaning for a green turtle that had gobbled up human trash, only to poop it out later with help from a veterinarian. The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) was initially found tangled in the net of Roberto Ubieta,...

Feb 13, 2020

This may be the biggest turtle that ever lived

An 8-million-year-old turtle shell unearthed in Venezuela measures nearly 8 feet (2.4 meters) long, making it the largest complete turtle shell known to science, a new study reported. This shell belonged to an extinct beast called Stupendemys geographicus, which lived in northern South America during the Miocene epoch, which lasted...

Apr 21, 2020

Baby leatherback sea turtles thriving due to COVID-19 beach restrictions

Baby leatherback sea turtles are doing better than they have in years, now that many humans are opting (or being ordered) to stay off beaches due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On one beach in Thailand, for instance, environmentalists have found 11 leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) nests since November, the...

Jan 5, 2021

Discovery of endangered female turtle provides hope for extremely rare species

The world's most endangered turtle species may now have a fighting chance, after a 3-foot-long (1 meter) female — a potential mate for the lone known male of the species — was discovered in Vietnam. Researchers from the Asian Turtle Program (ATP) of Indo-Myanmar Conservation (IMC) and the Wildlife Conservation...

Feb 20, 2021

Why thousands of turtles were paralyzed off the coast of Texas this week

This week, thousands of sea turtles were paralyzed in the frigid waters along the Texas coastline during the unprecedented winter storm that swept across the country. In response, a small army of volunteers, many of them without power and running water, sprang into action to rescue these endangered creatures. So...

Feb 24, 2021

Why rescuers are feeding turtles mayonnaise after a disastrous oil spill

While some people slather mayonnaise on their sandwiches, Israel's National Sea Turtle Rescue Center uses the condiment for a unique purpose: to treat endangered turtles after oil spills, The Associated Press (AP) reported. More than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of Israel's Meditteranean coastline became blotted with huge globs of tar...