Digital Images of Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina) from Clifton Institute, Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge and Smithsonian

This dataset collects digital photos of Terrapene c. carolina turtles, 5 views per turtle. The dataset includes original DNG files (organized in folders by location) for more than 98 turtles and PNG files of 55 turtles with scutes outlined (organized within the folder "Prepared Photos"). Turtle samples of the subspecies Terrapene c. carolina were obtained from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and from two nearby field sites, Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge and The Clifton Institute. An 18% gray color standard calibration card (brand: Digital Grey Kard) cut to 50mm X 30mm dimensions was placed next to the turtles. For each of the 5 views, two photos (for a total of 10 photos per turtle) were taken. Each duplicate photo was taken immediately after the initial photo without moving or adjusting the turtles. More details can be found in the PeerJ article, "New approaches for capturing and estimating variation in complex animal color patterns from digital photographs: Application to the Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)" (Maki et al., 2025).