It seems as though turtles and tortoises may hold the keys to answering some of the biggest questions of the universe.
Scientists have discovered that the animals, through their shells, can help track and understand nuclear contamination ... and maybe more.
Cyler Conrad is one of those researchers working on this. He’s an Earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and says from some earlier work, he knew turtles and tortoises could grow colorful material on their shells.
It’s called scute keratin, and it grows kind of like human fingernails — or tree rings — do.
So, Conrad figured, if tree rings can pick up environmental information over time, maybe turtle and tortoise shells could, too. And, it turns out, they can.
