Clam shell growth is related to environmental conditions such as seawater temperature, salinity and food availability. The Bangor scientists are sclerochronologists who study the growth and age of clams using annual growth lines in the shell in much the same way as dendrochronologists study the growth of trees using tree-rings. Both these records appear to have been eclipsed by the latest specimen, whose age, between 405 and 410 years, has been assessed by counting the annual growth lines in the shell. Unofficially, the record belongs to a 374 year old Icelandic clam which was found in a museum. When this animal was a juvenile, King James I replaced Queen Elizabeth I as English monarch, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth and Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for espousing the view that the Sun rather than the Earth was the centre of the universe.ДЄccording to the Guinness Book of Records, the existing record for the longest-lived animal belongs to a 220 year old Arctica clam collected in 1982 from American waters. Shell growth is related to water temperature, salinity, and food availability, for example.ДЄ main goal, Wanamaker said, is to determine if the climate of the last half century 'is extraordinary compared to the last thousand years.Can you imagine living for four centuries? A team of scientists from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences believe they have found an animal which did just that, a quahog clam, Arctica islandica, which was living and growing on the seabed in the cold waters off the north coast of Iceland for around 400 years. 'Just like tree rings, those growth lines vary in accordance with the environment,' Wanamaker said.

The researchers hope to use their shell studies to reconstruct a record of environmental changes over the past several centuries. Wanamaker added that several research teams want to study the tissue of living quahog clams to tease out the secret. 'It is possible that an investigation of the tissues of these real-life Methuselahs might help us to understand the process of aging,' team member Chris Richardson said in a media statement.

Scientists believe the secret to the clams' longevity is a slowed cell-replacement process. 'I think in my stomach if you start getting up around 600, then maybe that would be the maximum-but that's just pure speculation,' he added. 'There's probably many others that are actually quite older-we just haven't found them yet,' Wanamaker said. The animal died when the researchers counted its rings. The new clam is at least 30 years older, according to the Bangor University team. Unofficially, the record belongs to a 374-year-old Icelandic clam housed in a German museum. Quahog clams are known for their longevity.ДЄ 220-year-old taken from American waters in 1982 holds the official Guinness Book of World Records oldest animal title. By this reckoning, the clam would be only the oldest non-colonial animal. Some protest the 'oldest animal' designation, saying it should go to certain corals that grow together to form colonies. 'On a side note, we discovered this very old clam,' said Al Wanamaker, a postdoctoral researcher at the university. The team is studying growth lines in clam shells as part of a project to understand how the climate has changed over the past thousand years.

The team plucked the mollusk from 262-feet-deep (80-meter-deep) waters off the northern coast of Iceland. When this animal was young, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays and the English were establishing their first settlements in the Americas. A clam dredged from icy Arctic waters is being hailed as the world's longest-lived animal.Д¬limate researchers at Bangor University in the United Kingdom recently counted 405 annual growth rings in the shells of a quahog clam.

Oldest animal age