This Ancient Shark Was Already Old When Shakespeare Was Alive

A Creature Born Before Modern History

Imagine an animal swimming in the Arctic Ocean today that was already alive during the reign of King James I, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and centuries before the United States existed. That is not a thought experiment — it is the documented reality of the Greenland shark, the longest-lived vertebrate ever recorded on Earth.

A 2016 study radiocarbon-dated Greenland shark eye lenses, and the largest specimen came out at about 392 years old, with a margin of 120 years either way, making it the longest-lived vertebrate known. The largest shark, around five meters long, carried that headline estimate of roughly 392 years — but the honest statement, accounting for uncertainty, is that this animal was at least 272 years old and possibly more than 500. Even the conservative end of that range is staggering.

How Scientists Cracked the Age Mystery

The nucleus at the center of a shark's eye lens forms before birth and is never replaced over its life, making the carbon locked inside it a chemical snapshot of the moment the animal began. By radiocarbon dating that tissue — and using the spike of carbon-14 that nuclear weapons tests left in the oceans in the 1950s as a time stamp for younger sharks — researchers could estimate how long each had been alive.

The work, led by Julius Nielsen and published in the journal Science, covered 28 female sharks, ranging from under a meter to just over five meters in length. Traditional methods for determining the age of a species involve analyzing calcified tissue — a feature that is sparse in Greenland sharks — making the eye lens technique a crucial breakthrough. The previously known longest-living vertebrate, the bowhead whale, can live for around 211 years — still less than even the lower estimate of a Greenland shark's lifespan.

A Life Lived in Extreme Slow Motion

These sharks live in near-freezing water with their metabolism turned right down, and a body that does everything slowly tends to do it for a very long time. It is a life lived almost in slow motion, paced to water that barely climbs above freezing from one century to the next. Measurements suggest that Greenland sharks grow at a rate of just 0.5 to 1 centimeter per year.

The age at sexual maturity was found to be at least 156 years, plus or minus 22 years. Think about that: a Greenland shark alive today may not have reproduced for the first time until sometime in the 1870s. The Greenland shark inhabits the dim, frigid depths of the Arctic Ocean, and despite its extreme lifespan, research has found that its vision remains intact and well-adapted for life in dim light — a remarkable preservation of sensory function across centuries.

Extraordinary Longevity, Extraordinary Vulnerability

A species that takes 150 years to breed cannot replace its numbers quickly, which makes it badly exposed to anything that kills adults faster than the slow trickle of new ones can keep up. Greenland sharks are caught as bycatch and were once hunted in large numbers for the oil in their livers, and a population that recovers on a timescale of centuries has little room to absorb that pressure.

As lead researcher Nielsen noted, Greenland sharks are "among the largest carnivorous sharks on the planet," and their role as an apex predator in the Arctic ecosystem is "totally overlooked." Efforts to conserve Greenland sharks are particularly important due to their extreme longevity, long maturation periods, and heightened population sensitivity — and scientists are also working to understand their exceptional longevity at the molecular level. In a world where ocean ecosystems face mounting pressure, a predator that takes centuries to mature may be one of the most fragile giants the sea has ever produced.