World’s oldest vertebrate is a shark that may live for 500 years
Earth 11 august 2016 Species: Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) Living space: somewhere down in the North Atlantic and the virus surface waters of the Arctic Fish that were alive during the Age of Enlightenment are as yet swimming solid. A Greenland shark has inhabited least 272 years, making the species the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet – crushing the past record held by a 211-year-old bowhead whale. Be that as it may, it might have been pretty much as old as 500 years. "We certainly anticipated that the sharks should be old, yet we didn't expect that it would be the longest-living vertebrate creature," says Julius Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark Living somewhere down in the North Atlantic and the freezing surface waters of the Arctic, Greenland sharks have a steady climate and develop only a couple of centimeters each year. Notwithstanding their sluggish development, however, they arrive at in excess of 5 meters long and ...