Scientist discover that Greenland sharks can live as long as 400 years

In a game-changing discovery, scientists have found that Greenland sharks can live for as long as 400 years! The record was previously held by the bowhead whale that can live for up to 200 years.

According to a report published in the journal, Science, researchers were able to determine that Greenland sharks, also known as gurry or grey sharks, grew only by a centimetre every year. An average Greenland grows up to be about 5 metres in length. This let the researchers figure out the shark's age based on its size. They also tested the sharks for "bomb pulses" of carbon-14, a heavy isotope that's left behind from nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s. "Who would have expected that nuclear bombs [one day] could help to determine the life span of marine sharks?" said Michael Oellermann, a cold-water physiologist at Loligo Systems in Viborg, Denmark, to the journal. 

Greenland sharks are known to be scavengers who eat pretty much anything they lay their fins on - fish, squid, other marine animals, whale, even moose. They are also frustratingly slow and take their own sweet time to do anything. Moving at an average speed of 1 mile per hour, they grow to be over 20 feet in length.

Comparing the radiocarbon dates with shark lengths, the researchers were able to find that one particular shark was 392-years-old! That means he was born in the 1620s. Insane, right? These sharks apparently live for so long that they don't even start mating until they turn at least 156! Imagine being a virgin for 156 years.