Researchers have found an ancient shark in the North Atlantic, believed to be between 300 and 512 years old, which could be the oldest living vertebrate in the world.
This particular shark, was measured at 18 feet in length and weighed over a tonne. By measuring the size of the shark, researchers suggest the animal could have been born as early as 1505, making it even older than Shakespeare.
Greenland sharks are huge beasts, that can grow up to 5m in length.
They can be found, swimming slowly, throughout the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic.
The animals only reach sexual maturity when they are 4m-long. And with this new, very lengthy age-range, it suggests this does not occur until the animals are about 150 years old.
Because of their extreme longevity, Greenland sharks may still be recovering from being over-fished before WW2.
The sharks’ livers were once used for machine oil, and they were killed in great numbers before a synthetic alternative was found and the demand fell.
“When you evaluate the size distribution all over the North Atlantic, it is quite rare that you see sexually mature females, and quite rare that you find newborn pups or juveniles,” the experts explained.
“It seems most are sub–adults. That makes sense: if you have had this very high fishing pressure, all the old animals – they are not there any more. And there are not that many to give birth to new ones.
“There is, though, still a very large amount of ‘teenagers‘, but it will take another 100 years for them to become sexually active.”
The statistical method used to determine the sharks’ ages is Bayesian statistics.
Bayesian statistics were first worked out by the Rev Bayes in the 18th Century.