Scientists just named the longest-living species of vertebrate animal. It's a creature that can live up to 400 years old, almost twice the lifespan of the oldest giant tortoises or bowhead whales, nature's next runners-up. These lords of longevity are the Greenland sharks, Somniosus microcephalus.
Although the Greenland sharks are not a newfound species, their absurdly long lifespan has only now been discovered. Julius Nielsen, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and a team of fellow researchers have found that the mysterious sharks don't even reach maturity until 150 years. The slow-swimming sharks are endemic to the cold polar waters of the north Atlantic and Arctic oceans and can grow up to 17 feet in length. The scientists describe how they discovered the Greenland sharks' lifespan today in the journal Science.
"We were blown away by the lifespan of these sharks," says Peter Bushnell, a biologist with the team at Indiana University, South Bend. "Frankly, we sort of looked at this at first and asked ourselves, OK, so where did we go wrong?"
The rest of the article can be found here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a22278/greenland-shark-live-for-400-years/
