Meet the longest-living vertebrate on Earth, a witness to centuries of history beneath the ice. The Greenland shark teaches us that the ocean still holds astounding secrets about life on our planet. Thanks to a unique technique, scientists have managed to decipher the age of a shark that has lived for almost four hundred years. #InnovativeScience #OceanMysteries #GreenlandShark
00:00A journey through time. The mystery of the Greenland Shark. In the frigid, dark waters of the Arctic and the North Atlantic lives a legendary creature. It's not a myth, it's the Greenland Shark. A being that has defied the passage of time in a way that science is only just beginning to understand.
00:19For centuries, the true longevity of this predator was one of the greatest secrets of the ocean. The challenge was monumental, as traditional methods for determining the age of animals didn't work for them.
00:32How do you find out how old a creature is when it grows at such an incredibly slow rate? The answer to this enigma was not found in the past, but in a chemical signature left by one of the most impactful events of the 20th century.
00:46Nuclear Bomb Testing
00:48In the mid-last century, these explosions released a significant amount of radiocarbon into the atmosphere. An isotope that spread across the planet, incorporating itself into the tissues of living beings.
01:01Scientists realized that at the center of the Greenland shark's eye, there is a tissue that forms before birth and does not change over time.
01:09This tissue became a time capsule, capable of revealing whether the shark was born before or after these nuclear tests. With this innovative technique, a team of researchers analyzed eye samples from 28 female sharks that died as bycatch in commercial fishing operations.
01:27The finding was astounding. The scientists discovered that these sharks don't reach sexual maturity until around 156 years old. But the most impactful revelation was the estimated age of the oldest female in the sample.
01:42The analysis indicated she had lived approximately 392 years, making her the longest living vertebrate known on Earth. This titan has witnessed human history, silently navigating beneath the ice long before the industrial revolution.
01:58This discovery not only reveals the extraordinary longevity of this species, but also highlights the importance of innovative science. With a better understanding of their life cycle, experts can develop better conservation strategies to protect these ancient inhabitants of our polar oceans.
02:16The Greenland shark reminds us that profound mysteries still exist on our planet, and that some of the most amazing creatures are waiting to be discovered in the depths of the seas.
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