![]() ![]() The animal died when the researchers counted its rings. The new clam is at least 30 years older, according to the Bangor University team. Unofficially, the record belongs to a 374-year-old Icelandic clam housed in a German museum. ![]() Quahog clams are known for their longevity.Ī 220-year-old taken from American waters in 1982 holds the official Guinness Book of World Records oldest animal title. By this reckoning, the clam would be only the oldest non-colonial animal. Some protest the "oldest animal" designation, saying it should go to certain corals that grow together to form colonies. "On a side note, we discovered this very old clam," said Al Wanamaker, a postdoctoral researcher at the university. The team is studying growth lines in clam shells as part of a project to understand how the climate has changed over the past thousand years. The team plucked the mollusk from 262-feet-deep (80-meter-deep) waters off the northern coast of Iceland. When this animal was young, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays and the English were establishing their first settlements in the Americas. A clam dredged from icy Arctic waters is being hailed as the world's longest-lived animal.Ĭlimate researchers at Bangor University in the United Kingdom recently counted 405 annual growth rings in the shells of a quahog clam. ![]()
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