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Zanzibar, Tanzania — Eight children and an adult died after eating sea turtle meat on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, while 78 other people were hospitalized, authorities said Saturday. Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy by Zanzibar's people even though it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning. The adult who died late Friday was the mother of one of the children who succumbed earlier, said the Mkoani District medical officer, Dr. Haji Bakari. He said the turtle meat was consumed Tuesday.

Gisele Bündchen saved a sea turtle’s life after finding it had been washed ashore upside down while trapped inside a fishing net. The rescue was captured on video and shared to her Instagram. In the video, a distressed Bündchen, 41, squats down and immediately begins to carefully de-tangle the large upside down sea turtle from the discarded netting while speaking in Portuguese. “Early this morning I was walking on the beach and Onyx started barking at a pile of ocean trash that had washed during high tide,” she wrote alongside the video.

(photo in article) How the turtle shell evolved has puzzled scientists for years, but new research sheds light on how their hard shells were formed. Scientists say the ancient fossil skeleton of an extinct South African reptile has helped bridge a 30 to 55-million-year gap. This ancestor of the modern turtle, Eunotosaurus, is thought to be around 260 million years old. It had significant differences to a recently found fossil relative. Eunotosaurus was discovered over a century ago but new research in the journal Current Biology has only now analysed its differences to other turtle fossils. Eunotosaurus africanus Skeleton...

Where in the Hell is PETA?

A Santa Rosa woman has been indicted in federal court in San Francisco for allegedly taking part in the illegal trade of endangered sea turtle parts from China into the United States, authorities said today. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said 54-year-old Qing Song was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in importing and selling guitar picks made from the shells of the endangered Hawksbill sea turtle. Hawksbill sea turtles are one of seven turtle species listed as endangered under either U.S. law or international treaties, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The alleged activities took place from...