Bowhead whales are some of the world's oldest living mammals.. shame they are still hunted in this day and age.
George sent Bada 48 frozen bowhead eyeballs, each about the size of a billiard ball, he and other biologists had saved from whale hunts in Barrow, Gambell, Wainwright, Point Hope, and Savoonga from 1978 to 1997. George knew the relative ages of the sampled whales, but he didn't tell Bada, who nonetheless determined which sample came from an infant, a juvenile, or an adult.
Bada found that most of the adult whales were between 20 and 60 years old when they died, but five males were much older. One was 91, one was 135, one 159, one 172, and the oldest whale was 211 years old at the time of its death. That whale, alive during the term of President Clinton, was also gliding slowly and gracefully through the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas when Thomas Jefferson was president.
Bada explained that the method of measuring changes in aspartic acid to determine age has an accuracy range of about 16 percent, which means the 211 year-old bowhead could have been from 177 to 245 years old.
The oldest known ages for mammals are 110 years for a blue whale and 114 years for a fin whale, based on a Japanese scientist's counting of waxy laminates on the inner ear plug of the whales, a method that does not work for bowheads. The oldest living person with a birth certificate was a 122-year-old woman from France who died in 1997. Elephants have lived to 70 in captivity, so bowheads may be the oldest mammals that exist.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF15/1529.html
George sent Bada 48 frozen bowhead eyeballs, each about the size of a billiard ball, he and other biologists had saved from whale hunts in Barrow, Gambell, Wainwright, Point Hope, and Savoonga from 1978 to 1997. George knew the relative ages of the sampled whales, but he didn't tell Bada, who nonetheless determined which sample came from an infant, a juvenile, or an adult.
Bada found that most of the adult whales were between 20 and 60 years old when they died, but five males were much older. One was 91, one was 135, one 159, one 172, and the oldest whale was 211 years old at the time of its death. That whale, alive during the term of President Clinton, was also gliding slowly and gracefully through the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas when Thomas Jefferson was president.
Bada explained that the method of measuring changes in aspartic acid to determine age has an accuracy range of about 16 percent, which means the 211 year-old bowhead could have been from 177 to 245 years old.
The oldest known ages for mammals are 110 years for a blue whale and 114 years for a fin whale, based on a Japanese scientist's counting of waxy laminates on the inner ear plug of the whales, a method that does not work for bowheads. The oldest living person with a birth certificate was a 122-year-old woman from France who died in 1997. Elephants have lived to 70 in captivity, so bowheads may be the oldest mammals that exist.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF15/1529.html
