The shark that can live for 400 years

Risingbd Desk: A team of scientists has discovered the giant fish can live to be 400 years old, with one female estimate to be 392 years old.

This  means that a shark swimming in the North Atlantic today could have been born in 1624 - the decade the Mayflower carried the Pilgrim Fathers to North America, and not long after William Shakespeare penned his best-loved plays. She would have been a youngster when the Declaration of Independence was signed and would have lived through two World Wars.

The incredible discovery makes the species, which can grow up to 21 feet long, the longest living vertebrate known to science.

The researchers measured radiocarbon content of the lenses from which they could estimate age by matching the data to measurements showing radiocarbon changes in the marine food web in the northern North Atlantic over the past 500 years.

Scientists have used tissues from the eye lens nucleus in previous research to estimate the age of whales, but this is the first time that scientists used the method to date the longevity of a fish.

Lead author of the study, Julius Nielsen from the University of Copenhagen and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, said: `We used established radiocarbon methods but combined them in a new way.

This approach, along with the extraordinary ages for these sharks, makes this study highly unusual.`

Study co-author Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford added: `We had to take into account the complexity of the oceans and the growth patterns of the sharks when interpreting the data from this project.

`Without the advances in statistical analysis made in recent years, it would not have been possible to demonstrate the extraordinary longevity of this species.`

The experts already suspected the sharks could reach a ripe old age because of their large size and slow growth – the ferocious-looking fish grow no more than a third of an inch (1cm) a year.

 

Source: The Mail

Risingbd/Aug 14, 2016/Mukul