Scientists Found a Clam That Was Alive During the Renaissance

In 2006, a team of scientists hauled up a clam from the floor of the North Atlantic near Iceland. They named it Ming ? after the Chinese dynasty that was in full swing when it was born ? and determined it was 507 years old. The year it hatched: 1499. Columbus had just made his third voyage. Leonardo da Vinci was still painting. Ming the clam just sat there, clamming.

The age was calculated by counting the dark growth rings on Ming's shell, the same way you would count rings on a tree trunk. Ocean quahog clams add one ring per year, and their shells are meticulous little archives of time. Scientists later revised the age upward slightly to 507 years, making Ming the oldest known individual animal ever recorded.

There is, however, a deeply ironic twist. To count those rings accurately, the researchers had to open the shell. Which killed the clam. Ming survived five centuries of North Atlantic winters, predators, fishing nets, and the invention of literally everything ? and met its end in a scientific lab being poked at by people who were trying to celebrate it.

If it is any comfort, Ming's death was not in vain. The data from its shell has helped scientists better understand ocean temperatures and climate patterns going back half a millennium. It turns out a clam's shell is one of the finest historical records nature ever produced. We just had to destroy it to read it. Classic.