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Testudines Morphology

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What Are the “Testudines”?

Testudines (also known as chelonians) is an order composed of about 300 reptile species popularly known as turtles, tortoises, and terrapins that can occupy a wide variety of ecological niches, from marine and freshwater to terrestrial environments (Uetz et al. 2019; Ernst and Barbour 1989; Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Examples of the morphological diversity in Testudines: Terrapins (ad), tortoises (e, f) and turtles (g). Figures (ae): Roberto Murta/Bicho do Mato; Figure (f): Camila Mattedi

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Correspondence to Angele Martins .

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Ferreira-Cunha, L., Martins, A. (2019). Testudines Morphology. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1437-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1437-1

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