Skeletal remodelling suggests the turtle's shell is not an evolutionary straitjacket.

Recent efforts to decipher the enigma of the turtle's shell revealed that distantly related turtle species deploy diverse processes during shell development. Even so, extant species share in common a shoulder blade (scapula) that is encapsulated within the shell. Thus, evolutionary change in the correlated development of the shell and scapula probably underpins the evolution of highly derived shell morphologies.

Re-emergence of the Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) as a reference species for evo-devo.

Evolutionary developmental biology requires integration of knowledge from multiple levels of organization. Information at the genome level is quickly outpacing crucial descriptive information on developmental processes at the cell, tissue, and organ levels. Unprecedented progress in genomics has enabled the rise of so-called non-traditional reference species.