Clam, 405, is oldest animal ever

It has been christened Ming and it's officially the oldest animal to have ever lived.

A British scientific team discovered the 405-year-old clam, named after the Chinese dynasty and not the former Liberal Democrat leader, at the bottom of the ocean, and hope its longevity will reveal the secrets of ageing.

The record-breaking shellfish, 31 years older than the previous oldest animal, another clam, was caught last year when scientists from the Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences were dredging the seabed north of Iceland.



The "Arctica islandica" was among a haul of 3,000 empty shells and 34 live molluscs taken to the laboratory.

Unfortunately, by the time its true age had been established Ming was already dead. But the scientists aged the 3.4in clam from its shell which like trees has a layer or ring of growth for every year that the animal has been alive.

The shell only grows in summer when the water is warmer and the plankton it eats is plentiful. Each year a layer as thin as 0.1mm is laid down. When Dr Alan Wanamaker, one of the researchers, cut the clam's shell in half, he counted 405 lines.