Re: colors
Diamondbacks keep their pattern from hatching to adulthood. THey will tend to get lighter and attain more accent to their color for a couple years after reaching maturity. After that they will begin fading with age but still have similar patterns as they did at hatching. “Ornates” is the common name for all “Malaclemys terrapin macrospilota”. Some have been using it to describe light phase northerns and carolina terrapins. This is a bad misnomer that leads to much confusion. This would be similar to someone calling a western box turtle a star tortoise, granted these are in 2 different families but they look similar to some people. If you bought a “pair of Stars” from someone for $1000 and got a couple wild caught western boxes you would be confused and upset, right? Pictures are worth a thousand words. Scott