When the Tirtouga were first resurrected from fossils, scientists noted that they would attempt to walk or swim in a single direction, as if guided to some place which was never within the bounds of the laboratory which revived them. A few Tirtouga were tagged and released to migrate wherever they pleased, although many were concerned that they would devastate the present ecosystem, which had evolved without the risk of Tirtouga predation since the Mesozoic era. Their concerns were somewhat assuaged by the small number of individuals involved, and otherwise overruled by the overwhelming weight of scientific curiosity.

These Tirtouga swam the length of the oceans, typically finding a beach on some foreign continent, but a few ventured far inland into territories which no water pokemon could call home. For a time, this behavior confused science, until it was realized that their closest living relatives, the Squirtle, had before their extinction in the wild been noted by historians to swim long distances to return to their place of birth, and it was hypothesized that Tirtouga were doing the exact same thing. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that every area the Tirtouga found which also produced fossils showed ones consistent with having been a beach in Mesozoic times, and the long migrations of the Tirtouga soon provided vital support for acceptance of the theory of continential drift.

Today, the placement of the continents in ancient times is generally understood, and many types of geological evidence have helped in drawing the map of the world as it was 100 million years ago. Yet gaps remain in humanity's understanding, and whenever a new fossil is revived, a resurrected Tirtouga continues to assist in mapping what had once been the coastline where these ancient pokemon laid their eggs.