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Green sea turtle
The shell can be brown, gray, or olive. Its name comes from the greenish fat under the shell. Compared with a loggerhead, the green turtle has a small head for its size, and adults eat mostly seagrass and algae.
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Loggerhead sea turtle
Look for a large head and a reddish-brown shell. The jaws can crush hard prey such as conchs and whelks, which makes that outsized head a clue to how the turtle eats.
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Hawksbill sea turtle
This reef visitor has a narrow, pointed bill that can reach into crevices for sponges. The plates on its usually mottled shell tend to overlap, and the back edge often looks serrated.
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Leatherback sea turtle
Long ridges run down its dark, rubbery back where most sea turtles have hard plates. The leatherback ranges farther into cold waters than other sea turtles and eats soft-bodied prey, including jellyfish.
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Kemp's ridley sea turtle
An adult is small for a sea turtle and has a broad gray-green shell. Kemp’s ridleys often feed on crabs and other shellfish in shallow coastal waters, especially in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Alligator snapping turtle
A heavy head and three rough ridges along the shell give this freshwater turtle an alligator-like profile. A wormlike appendage on its tongue lures fish within reach.
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Diamondback terrapin
The plates on the upper shell can show nested rings shaped like diamonds. Look for this terrapin in coastal salt marshes and tidal creeks, where the water is often a mix of fresh water and seawater.
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Painted turtle
Watch for a smooth, dark shell with red or orange markings along the edge and yellow stripes on the head. Painted turtles often bask on logs in quiet freshwater, making those small flashes of color easier to see.
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Pig-nosed turtle
This freshwater turtle paddles on flippers that look surprisingly like those of a sea turtle. Its fleshy, upturned nose gives it away. It lives in northern Australia and southern New Guinea.
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Mary River turtle
The streamlined shell and broad webbing suit a turtle that lives in the Mary River system of Queensland. Adult males have unusually long tails that can reach about 70 percent of the shell’s length.
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Common box turtle
A hinge on the underside lets the turtle close its shell after pulling in its head and limbs. The high dome gives it room to tuck everything away. In the eastern part of its range, it is often found on woodland floors.
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Pancake tortoise
The low, flexible shell lets this East African tortoise slip into narrow rock cracks. The space it can squeeze into is a good clue to why its shell looks so different from the high dome on many land tortoises.
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Desert tortoise
The Mojave desert tortoise has a tall, sandy-brown shell and thick front legs built for digging. It spends much of its time in burrows, sheltering from extreme temperatures above ground.
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Radiated tortoise
Fine yellow lines fan out from the center of each dark plate on the domed shell. This tortoise comes from Madagascar, where it can live in dry scrub and spiny forests.
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