Here at home our sharks have been under the pump of late, a new study showing that local great white numbers are plummeting at an alarming rate (HERE).

That’s pretty worrying, even if sharks aren’t your cup of tea, but it’s better news for the Greenland shark of the North Atlantic oceans. New research shows that the shark can live to be 400 years old, with their findings below courtesy of Huffington Post:

The researchers used a somewhat complicated method to determine the age of the sharks. They knew that in the mid-1950s, nuclear bomb testing left high amounts of the heavy isotope carbon-14…the researchers measured the amount of carbon-14 in the eye lenses of the sharks they collected, and used it as a marker to help determine their relative ages…

…they estimate the oldest shark they found was 392. But the shark could have been as young as 272 years old, and may have been as old as 512. But even the low end of the age range would beat out the bowhead whale, which has an estimated lifespan of 211 years, for longest-lived vertebrate, according to the research.

Whilst they are the second-largest carnivorous sharks on the planet they are rarely observed by humans, spending most of their time at depths even scuba divers don’t reach.

The only older recorded living animal is an ocean quahog clam discovered in Iceland back in 2006, which was found to be 507 years old.

Giggidy.

[source:huffpost]