Hawksbill sea turtle are taken by humans, though it is illegal to hunt them in many countries. In some parts of the world, hawksbill sea turtles are eaten as a delicacy. As far back as the fifth century BC, sea turtles, including the hawksbill, were eaten as delicacies in China. Many cultures also use turtles' shells for decoration. These turtles have been harvested for their beautiful shell since Egyptian times, and the material known as tortoiseshell is normally from the hawksbill. In China, where it was known as "tai mei", the hawksbill is called the "tortoise-shell turtle", named primarily for its shell, which
Turtle shell the study of the evolution of the turtle's shell. The first piece of fossil record discovered, essential for building the evolution and development model, was Germany and Thailand’s 214-million-year-old Late Triassic reptile "Proganochelys", which marked as the first point of full shell development and carapace ossification in Testudines. The following phenomenal discovery of China’s 220-million-year-old stem turtle, predating the "Proganonchelys" by 6 million years, the "Odontochelys semitestacea" fossil in China shed light on the intermediate stages of turtle carapace evolution by exhibiting a partially formed dorsal carapace. One major discovery was that "O. semitestacea" provided documentation that the plastron evolved