Greenland shark, vertebrate with the longest life
2016/08/11 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
The Greenland Shark can live at least 400 years, according to a recent work published in the journal Science. Thus, it would be the vertebrate with the longest known life.
The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) lives in the cold waters of the north Atlantic, reaching more than five meters high. The researchers know very little about the biology of these sharks, but they expected them to be of long life, since their growth rate is very low: a few centimeters a year. In addition, the usual age measurement techniques in fish do not work for these sharks, as they do not have the calcified structures necessary for this. Thus, they have used radiocarbon dating to calculate the age of 28 females caught as discards. The two older ones, 493 and 502 cm, calculated that they were about 335 and 392 years old.
Moreover, previous studies suggest that females reach sexual maturity from 400 cm. And according to the calculations that have been done now, that means they need more than 150 years to be sexually adult.
