Greenland sharks, one of nature’s least elegant creatures, have an estimated lifespan of up to 600 years.
Greenland sharks are among nature’s least elegant inventions. Lumpish, with stunted pectoral fins that they use for ponderously slow swimming in cold and dark Arctic waters, they have blunt snouts and gaping mouths that give them an unfortunate, dull-witted appearance. Many live with worm-like parasites that dangle repulsively from their corneas. They belong, appropriately enough, to the family. Once widely hunted for their liver oil, today they are considered bycatch.
And yet the species has an undeniable magnetism. It is among the world’s largest predatory sharks, growing up to eighteen feet in length, but also among its most elusive. Its life history is a black box, one that researchers have spent decades trying in vain to peer inside.
The mystery might have lingered were it not for the work of three Danish scientists—a physicist named Jan Heinemeier and two marine biologists, John Fleng Steffensen and Julius Nielsen. Nine years ago, Heinemeier and four of his colleagueson lens crystallines, a class of proteins found in the human eye. Like all organic molecules, crystallines contain carbon, including trace amounts of the radioactive isotope carbon-14.
Heinemeier’s paper made no mention of Greenland sharks. He and his co-authors did note, however, that their lens technique might be useful in the field of forensics. Not long after the study was published, Heinemeier received a request from police in Germany. They needed his help cracking an unusual case. In the city of Wenden, near Cologne, a teen-ager had opened his family’s freezer in search of a snack and discovered the bodies of three infant girls, wrapped in plastic.
In 2009, Heinemeier received another request, this time from Steffensen, who had recently travelled to Greenland and confronted the longevity puzzle. Was there a way, Steffensen asked, to use the sharks’ soft vertebrae for carbon dating? Heinemeier told him about his recent breakthrough in the murder case and suggested that Steffensen return to Greenland and bring back some lenses. But there was a problem.
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