512-year-old Greenland shark measuring 18 feet in length discovered; is it world's oldest living vertebrate?

An atypical study led by Danish scientist Julius Nielsen has discovered an 18-feet long ancient creature in the North Atlantic Ocean.

According to scientists, the shark is 512-year-old and is believed to be the oldest living vertebrate in the world. Vertebrates comprise all species of animals within the subphylum Vertebrata and is a kind of unique creature with backbones.

A 'Daily Star' report suggests that experts estimated that the shark might have been born in the year 1505. Just about the next year, in 1506 Leonardo da Vinci had completed his iconic painting the Mona Lisa. Now you know how ancient this creature is!

Since Greenland sharks grow just about one cm per year, scientists believe that the 18 feet long shark should be exceptionally old.

In exactly 1 hr and 7 minutes a satellite tag will pop-off from this Greenland shark female, it will float to the surface and establish contact with an Argos satellite. It will then transmit information on position as well as occupied temperatures the past 3 months. By tomorrow morning I will hopefully have the data which just can make it into my PhD before ending in four weeks. All of this (except handing in PhD in four weeks) will however only happen IF 1) the shark is not under sea ice (which would inhibit satellite transmission), 2) the sea is not too rough where the shark is which could lead to that the tag cap can’t be exposed properly in the air or 3) that the shark has not been deeper than 2,000 m which would have crushed the tag and destroyd it.... it also requires that there is no annoying animal eating the tag before we get the data which happened to us on a previous deployment. FINGERS CROSSED🤞🏻#greenlandsharkproject Photo credit: Takuji Noda 📸

A post shared by Julius Nielsen (@juniel85) on Oct 29, 2017 at 2:52pm PDT

Apart from this, the group of researchers are also using radiocarbon dating technology and the eye lenses of 28 different Greenland sharks have gone through a series of detailed examination process.

Also Read: Scientists discover 'Dinosaur-era' frilled shark with 300 teeth off the coast of Portugal

Scientists have managed to gather enough evidences which show that the oldest shark lens, discovered previously, is around 392 years old.

Moreover, the flesh of these Green Land sharks have certain type of chemical, which gives an unearthly feeling of being exceedingly drunk.