Thursday, January 17, 2008

Turtle Thursday: Carapace

Here are a couple pics of the carapace of Tyrannus. He's a red eared slider. Pics taken by Mrs. Bax0jayz with an Olympus FE-180 at highest rez. We chose to take some shots of his carapace (aka shell) because his is fairly bright and ornate. It's kind of like a colorful fingerprint, as no two turtles share the same patterns. The carapace it's like a crab's shell, or hard lke a rock. It's much more like your fingernails. The carapace consists of a series of plates that border eachother called schutes. As turtles grow, newer and larger layers of schutes grow beneath the top layers. As lower layers become mature, the top layer will pop off. Don't worry. It's normal. I've been collection many of those schutes over the years from all my turtles. They are fascinating. You can tell who they popped off from.

The folowing definitions are from Answers.com:
http://www.answers.com/carapace?cat=health

carapace (kâr'əpās) , shield, or shell covering, found over all or part of the anterior dorsal portion of an animal. In lobsters, shrimps, crayfish, and crabs, the carapace is the part of the exoskeleton that covers the head and thorax and protects the dorsal and lateral surfaces. In many crustaceans, the term carapace is also used to describe the hard, protective covering of the cephalothorax, as that of the horseshoe crab. The carapace of a turtle's shell is composed of expanded ribs and vertebrae overlain by dermal plates and horny scales.

carapace
The dorsal shell of turtles and tortoises. Abnormalities are caused by trauma, dietary deficiencies (particularly nutritional hyperparathyroidism), infections, environmental factors and tumors.

carapace
A carapace is a dorsal section of an exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups.

Turtles and tortoises:
The carapace is the dorsal, convex part of the shell structure of a
turtle, consisting primarily of the animal's broad ribcage. The spine and ribs are fused to bony plates beneath the skin which interlock to form a hard shell. Exterior to the skin the shell is covered by scutes, horny plates which protect the shell from scrapes and bruises. Turtles can survive surprisingly severe injuries to the carapace, and even deep cracks or missing portions can fill in with bone and heal. The softshell turtles, pig-nose turtle and leatherback sea turtle lack scutes and the bony carapace is covered only by skin. The carapaces of many species of turtles are brightly colored and patterned and allow individuals to identify others of their species at a distance. The carapaces expand and grow outward like growth rings on a tree as the turtle or tortoise matures. The consistency of the carapace resembles to hard keratin rather than bone. The plastron makes up the lower half of a turtle's shell.

4 comments:

steve said...

Excellent post today Bobby. I had no idea they were like fingerprints either. This one's a beauty. I'd love to see some pics of those collected scutes in the future someday, if possible.

Bobby "the Blue" said...

Not a bad idea. Maybe I can arrange that!

Anonymous said...

Round Two.

Anonymous said...

and three. :-)