Have you ever held a handful of scallop shells and wondered why they are colored differently? Or where the holes in a clam shell came from? And what is a mermaid's purse, exactly? Here's a fun guide ...

Six-year-old Luke Callihan, of Pennington, collects shells on the beach in Brigantine, Sunday, July 2, 2017. (Lori M. Nichols | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) This story was originally published August ...

Shells have long been valued by societies all over the world for their diversity, beauty, and luminescence. Evidence from the Middle Stone Age tells us that shells were the first objects to clearly be ...