The shells of turtles, tortoises, and sea turtles keep growing as long as the animals live—and some of them live a remarkably long time.
Cyler Conrad and colleagues analyzed the shells of five specimens from areas that potentially accumulated anthropogenic uranium throughScute growth sequence from the eastern box turtle collected from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1962. Credit: Conrad et al.
The turtle from Enewetak Atoll was collected in 1978, around 20 years after the end of nuclear testing at the site. The researchers speculate that cleanup activities may have stirred up contaminated sediment—but add that legacy contamination present in the atoll lagoon is also a possibility. Separate samples from different shell layers of the eastern box turtle collected from Oak Ridge in 1962 told a temporal story of its uranium exposure. The box turtle's most contaminated shell layer was the one it was born with, suggesting even higher contamination levels in its mother. The legacies of 20th century nuclear deployment, testing, and production still amble and swim among us—and chelonian shells could be used as environmental monitors, according to the authors.
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