A Greenland shark, estimatd to be nearly 400 years old — born around the 1600s — has gone viral for being the longest-living vertebrate known.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scientific American’s Carin Leong tells the story of the Greenland shark<\/a> in a YouTube<\/a> video, entitled “These super old sharks have a newly-discovered superpower.”<\/p>\n According to Leong, the sharks not only live for centuries, their eye sight remains intact and that’s how scientiists are able to determine their age, by looking at their eyes<\/a>. The shark’s lens is basically a biolgical time capsule, so by measuring carbon-14 levels, scientists can roughly estimate<\/a> when a shark was born, in which Leon discusses in the video.\u00a0<\/p>\n “There are sharks alive today that were born in the 1600s,” Leong said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Greenland sharks are the oldest vertebrates that we know of on Earth, and the oldest one we’ve dated comes in about 400 years old,” she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n “How do we know this, you might ask? By carbon dating the shark’s eye lenses,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A 2016 study using radiocarbon dating on eye lens proteins revealed these Arctic creatures grow just 1 cm\/year, living for centuries in deep, cold waters.<\/p>\n Research published in Science estimated one female to be roughly 392 years old (plus or minus 120 years), with a birth year likely in the early 1600s.<\/p>\n Greenland sharks live for 250 to 500 years due to an exceptionally slow metabolism, cold Arctic habitat, and unqiue genetic adaptations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Their slow, 0.5\u20131 cm annual growth and low-energy lifestyle in deep, freezing water reduce cellular wear and tear. Their longevity is supported by enhanced DNA repair genes and specialized “jumping genes” that prevent age-related damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Greenland shark, estimatd to be nearly 400 years old — born around the 1600s — has gone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2676,4348,57,4349,4347,4346],"class_list":{"0":"post-4451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-beauty","10":"tag-greenland","11":"tag-greenland-shark","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}