Oldest mollusc ever
- Who
- Quahog clam, Arctica islandica, Quahog clam, Arctica islandica
- What
- 507 year(s)
- Where
- Iceland
- When
- November 2013
The longest-lived mollusc - and indeed the longest-lived non-colonial animal ever discovered - is a quahog clam (Arctica islandica), which had been living on the seabed off the north coast of Iceland until it was dredged by researchers from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences in Wales, UK, in 2006. On 28 October 2007, sclerochronologists from Bangor initially announced that they had studied the annual growth rings in the shell and determined the clam to be between 405 and 410 years old. However, in November 2013, using more sophisticated ageing techniques, they revised this figure up to an extraordinary 507 years. The clam was nicknamed "Ming" after the Chinese dynasty in power when the clam was born; its estimated birth year of 1499 would also have meant that Queen Elizabeth I was still the reigning monarch in England at that time.
"Non-colonial" means excluding all communal-living animals made up of multiple organisms that cohabit as part of a single body,such as coral and siphonophores (e.g.,the Portuguese man o'war).
The team who made the discovery were part of the EU Millennium project studying climate change over the past 1,000 years–changes that are recorded in shells.