tortoises

A Greenland shark alive today may have been born before the Thirty Years' War ended in 1648. An ocean quahog clam called Ming was 507 years old when researchers accidentally killed it by opening its shell. A bowhead whale carries harpoon fragments from weapons manufactured in the 1800s, embedded in its blubber for over a century. Extreme longevity in animals is not accidental — it is the product of specific biological mechanisms that researchers are now mapping in molecular detail.