Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Oxford radiocarbon-dated the eye lens nuclei of 28 female Greenland sharks, a tissue that forms early in life and never gets replaced.
The dating placed the species' life span at a minimum of 272 years, with the largest shark examined, measuring just over five meters, estimated at 392 years old, give or take 120 years, and sexual maturity only beginning at roughly 156 years of age.
That would make the Greenland shark the longest-lived vertebrate known, older than the previously recognized record holder, the bowhead whale. Only the smallest sharks tested carried a chemical marker from 1960s nuclear bomb tests, confirming the dating method against a known reference point, but the error margins around individual ages remain wide, up to 120 years in either direction for the oldest animals.
Read the original study
Nielsen et al., Science, 2016 · doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf1703
A fish that may have been born in the 1600s.
Source
- Nielsen, J., Hedeholm, R. B., Heinemeier, J., Bushnell, P. G., Christiansen, J. S., Olsen, J., Ramsey, C. B., Brill, R. W., Simon, M., Steffensen, K. F., & Steffensen, J. F. (2016). Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus). Science, 353(6300), 702–4. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf1703