Two scientists from Bangor University in North Wales found
the world’s oldest known living animal, a 507-year-old clam, when they
harvested it from the bottom of the Icelandic Ocean in 2006. The remarkable
clam was among 200 specimens the scientists scooped from the icy bottom of the
ocean to use in researching climate changes over the past 1,000 years.
They named the bivalve Ming the Clam after they determined
it was born in 1499 A.D. That was near the middle of the Ming Dynasty that
ruled China until 1644. 
After studying the ancient clam, marine geologists Paul
Butler and James Scourse announced to the scientific world that they found the
world’s oldest known animal. The marine scientists and administrative members
for the university in the United Kingdom were criticized for killing the oldest
known animal. The marine geologists routinely froze clams they harvested and
took them to their lab in the university so they could examine the clams as
part of a study about climate changes during the last 1,000 years. 
At first inspection, the two researchers found the specimen
they named Ming had growth rings indicating that clam was 405 years old. After
studying the old clam for a year, they found more growth rings and changed the
estimated age to 507 years old. Much like the growth rings found in a tree, a
clam grows one ring a year as it matures.
Butler wrote an article for “Science Nordic” magazine in
which he suggested that other clams older than Ming might be found. “Thousands
of ocean quahogs are caught commercially every year,” Butler wrote. “So it is
entirely likely that some fishermen may have caught quahogs that are as old or
even older than the one we caught.”
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| The Pando Forest |
The quahog is the most popular clam used in making chowder.
Fishermen bring up thousands of clams from the cold Icelandic Ocean bottom every
time their specialized trawlers harvest the bivalves. Therefore, a clam even older than Ming could
make its way into the chowder of an unsuspecting seafood eater.
While Ming holds the record for the oldest animal known,
other living earth organisms continue to exist for more than thousands of years.
A 106-acre colony of aspen trees in Utah is at least 80,000 years old; some estimates
put that age well past 100,000 years. Scientists call the forest Pando. Each
tree is a clone (identical duplicate) of the other hundreds of trees in the
spectacular forest. All the trees grow from a single, huge, underground root
system, making that forest the oldest known living organism on the planet.
The shells for Ming the Clam stay in the research lab inside
the North Wales university. No clams even close to the age of Ming have been
found yet. Since clam chowder is a popular dish the odds another ancient living
animal clam will equal to the 507 years of Ming is anybody’s guess.
