Small facts that change how you see the everyday.

The Shark That Lives for at Least 272 Years—and Takes About 150 Years to Grow Up

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Animal Wonders #1

The Takeaway

The Greenland shark lives for at least 272 years, making it the longest-living vertebrate.

What is more, it takes about 150 years before it becomes an adult capable of producing young.

This shark lives in the cold waters of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, and everything about its pace of life is slow.

The numbers show just how unusual it is:

Lifespan: at least 272 years
Largest individual studied: estimated to be about 392 years old (range: 272–512 years)
Time to reach adulthood: about 150 years
Growth per year: about 1 centimetre
Adult body length: 4–5 metres

The figure of 272 years is at the lowest end of the estimate.

Even so, it far exceeds the 211 years of the bowhead whale, previously considered the longest-living.

A human being who reaches 100 is called exceptionally long-lived.

For this shark, 100 years old is still not yet adulthood.

Among the individuals alive today, there may well be some that have been swimming since the Edo period.

First, how do researchers know its age?

This shark has almost no hard tissue that can be used to count the years.

So researchers turned to the lens of its eye.

The proteins at the centre of the lens are formed before birth and are not replaced afterwards.

In other words, the centre preserves information from the time when the shark was born.

Radiocarbon dating of the carbon in the lenses of 28 individuals produced the estimates above.

The foundation of this longevity is thought to be its “slow way of living” in cold seas.

It grows by only about 1 centimetre a year.

Its body enlarges slowly, and it does not become an adult until about 150 years of age.

This unhurried way of living is thought to lead to a lifespan measured in centuries.

However, the full mechanism behind why it can live for so long is still being researched.

What is known is that it lives as though on a flow of time in which it has given up living fast.

It lives for 272 years and only becomes an adult at 150.

More than simply being long-lived, the Greenland shark is a creature for which the passage of time itself is different from ours.

Science, “Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark”
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “Greenland Sharks Are the Longest-Living Vertebrates”