While opening a bivalve mollusk, or ocean quahog, found in an Icelandic seabed during a 2006 expedition, researchers at Bangor University in Wales accidentally killed the animal that turned out to be the world's oldest living, ScienceNordic reports.
Named Ming, the ocean quahog (A. islandica) was originally estimated to be 405-years-old after it was first discovered and dated, and even made the Guinness Book of World Records and headlines across the world, as the oldest quahogs were thought to live to just 100 years.
But when scientists opened Ming to count the number of rings in the interior of its shell in order to re-date it, they discovered that it was actually 507, killing it in the process.
"We got it wrong the first time and maybe we were a bit hastingly publishing our findings back then. But we are absolutely certain that we've got the right age now," ocean scientist Paul Butler, who researches into the A. islandica at Bangor University, told ScienceNordic. There is now a general consensus among scientists that the "new" age is correct.
As Ming's rings had compacted into tiny millimeters, scientists counted its outside rings as well and used carbon-14 testing, a radiocarbon dating method, to determine and confirm its "new" age, meaning that Ming was born in 1499, just seven years after Columbus first visited America.
"I am very confident that they have now determined the right age. If there is any error, it can only be one or two years," marine biologist Rob Witbaard of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who has researched into the A. islandica for more than 30 years and was not involved in the study of Ming, told ScienceNordic.
Ocean quahogs are native to the Atlantic Ocean and are commercially harvested as food sources, and prior to the discovery of Ming, the oldest living quahog was dated at 220 years, officially, while the oldest unofficial record was held by a 374-year-old specimen. Ming is of particular interest not only due to its extraordinary age, but all of the things in which it can help scientists study, such as climate change and shifting ocean temperatures.
"The fact alone that we got our hands on an animal that's 507 years old is incredibly fascinating, but the really exciting thing is of course everything we can learn from studying the mollusc," the head of the AMS 14C Dating Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark, Associate Professor Jan Heinemeier, who helped with the new dating of Ming, told ScienceNordic.
"There are a number of methods to chart past climate on land, but for the marine environment we only have some very limited data. The A. islandica can help fill this gap in our knowledge and provide us with a very accurate picture of past climate," Witbaard agreed. "This is important to our understanding of how much changes in the oceans affect the climate on land. And the really amazing thing is that the pattern in the ocean quahog's growth rings actually recurs in tree rings."
As for how Ming got to live for so long, researchers believe it is due to its low oxygen consumption and subsequent slow metabolism, meaning that Ming and other quahogs live their life in "slow motion." They also believe genetics for longevity played a role in Mings long life, and add that because quahogs are fished commercially for food, some people may end up catching or even eating ones that are even older than Ming.
Click here to see photos of Ming, which was the world's oldest known living animal at age 507.
*This article has been updated to a note a few changes.
