00:00 [Music]
00:04 This is what is known as the Greenland shark.
00:06 It's not only one of the largest shark species on the planet,
00:09 often growing up to 23 feet long,
00:11 but it's also one of the longest living vertebrates known as well,
00:14 sometimes living for hundreds of years.
00:17 In fact, experts believe they don't even reach sexual maturity until age 150.
00:22 A recently biologist discovered one of these sharks,
00:25 which usually makes their home in the cold Arctic and North Atlantic,
00:28 in the Caribbean.
00:29 The researchers were monitoring tiger shark activity just off the coast of Belize,
00:33 but instead one of their lines caught what they describe as a, quote,
00:37 "very slow-moving sluggish creature under the surface of the water"
00:41 that looked like something that would exist in prehistoric times.
00:44 The researchers say the coral reef they were studying goes down to depths nearing two miles,
00:48 something more akin to the Greenland shark's natural habitat.
00:51 The sharks, which can sometimes live up to 500 years,
00:54 live in extremely deep areas moving slowly as they slowly age.
00:58 Now scientists are keen to figure out whether the one they discovered in the tropics grew up there
01:02 or simply migrated.
01:04 Because if it's the former, it raises the question,
01:06 where else in the vast deep of Earth's oceans could these aged sharks be found?
01:11 (upbeat music)
01:14 (upbeat music)
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