Around the world in science, health this week
(WorldNews Health)

An ancient mariner The Greenland shark — a 5-metre-long predator that may live more than 400 years — according to a new study, is the longest lived vertebrate by at least a century. According to researchers, the longevity of the sharks is such that females are not ready to reproduce until after they hit their 156th birthday. In the 1930s, a fisheries biologist in Greenland tagged more than 400, only to discover that the sharks grow only about 1 centimetre a year. After that, researchers employed an unusual technique: They looked for high amounts of carbon-14, a heavy isotope left behind by nuclear bomb testing in the mid-1950s. Extra carbon from the resulting “bomb...