Ming the Mollusk, world’s oldest animal, was 507 years old

Back in 2006, researchers pulled a clam from the waters around Iceland that became famous for being the oldest animal in the world. Ming — as the mollusk came to be known as — was estimated at the time at just over 400 years old, but a new study has tacked on another century to the mollusk's age.

The researchers, from Bangor University in the UK, were dredging up clams from the Icelandic coast as part of a study of how the climate has changed over the past 1,000 years. In the same way that trees are useful for tracking climate changes on land, clams are especially useful for tracking these changes in the ocean. This is because, just like trees, they form concentric rings in their shells, with one ring for every year of their life, and the width of the ring depends on the ocean conditions. When they discovered Ming (named after the Ming Dynasty), a count of its shell rings came up with an age of 405 years — putting it as the oldest non-colonial animal ever discovered.

However, it turns out that estimate was off by a bit. According to ScienceNordic, the researchers counted the rings on the hinge ligament — the area that connects the two halves of the clam's shell — since that's where the rings are best protected. However, due to Ming's advanced age the rings were so tightly packed that some couldn't be seen. In a new count, the researchers cross-referenced the hinge ligament rings with what they saw on the outside of Ming's shell. Using carbon dating to confirm it all, they found that Ming's age was much older than they first thought — 507 years old!

[ More Geekquinox: NASA video flies us through four billion years of Mars evolution ]

Unfortunately, because you need to open up a clam to study the rings of its hinge ligament, and opening up a clam like that kills it, discovering Ming's age unfortunately ended its life. However, the researchers shouldn't be condemned for this. First off, there was absolutely no way to know Ming's age before they opened it up. More importantly though, the roughly 50 kg worth of clams the researchers pulled up during their study is minuscule compared to the over 14,000 metric tons (just weighing the meat) that commercial fisheries landed that same year. Just by the math, it's very likely that clams just as old, if not older, have ended up going into our cooking pots over the years.

How do these clams live so long? It's due to their very slow metabolism, and they could possibly have a natural resistance to aging mechanisms coded right into their genes. According to a Bangor University press release, studying these "real life 'Methuselahs' might help understand the processes of ageing in a range of organisms, including humans."

(Photo courtesy: Bangor University, Rob Witbaard)

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!