Party Animals Atlanta

Sign up for camp at Dunwoody Nature Center and meet some of our animal friends 🐍🐢🦎 Click link for dates:

https://www.partyanimalsatlanta.com/upcoming-events

Look what I stumbled across in the North Georgia mountains — the shell of an Eastern Box Turtle! Nature left behind a perfect little science lesson:

This amazing shell has two layers:
🐢The inside is bone. Yep, that’s part of the turtle’s skeleton!
🐢The outside is made of keratin, the same protein your fingernails are made of.

If you look closely at the first photo, you can see the keratinized scutes (the patterned outer plates) starting to flake off as the shell has decomposed. This process gives us a rare peek at the bone underneath.

See that ridge running down the middle of the shell in the second pic? That’s the turtle’s backbone fused to the inside. Unlike cartoons, turtles can’t crawl out of their shells. Their shell is part of their body!

🎶 Fun fact: Terrapin Station was the first album I bought when I was little…because it had two turtles on it🐢😁🐢