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| Eye-to-Eye with Homo Erectus (T. Roche) |
Some song lyrics assume that it's best to be human. They
associate the so-called descendants of homo erectus
with all sorts of groovy things such as swinging on stars and carrying moonbeams home in jars.
Nevertheless, the individual human lifespan remains woefully short compared to that of, say, a clam.
MSN Now reports
that ocean scientist Paul Butler and his team estimated the age of a clam they discovered in 2006 to be 507.
That would be more than half a millennium, and would mean this clam was alive at the time of Christopher Columbus (can't tell whether they knew one another though).
You might think that a clam which lasted so long could still be around, and it probably would be if it weren't for the "oops" factor. It turns out that this same team of scientists "accidentally" killed the unsuspecting mollusk by opening it up
"for scrutiny."
Who knows how much longer this "oldest living animal ever" (or many other of God's creatures) might have lasted if it weren't for human interference…
Resources
http://now.msn.com/oldest-animal-in-the-world-ming-the-clam-was-reportedly-507-years-old-before-it-died?gt1=50501
Copyright November 15, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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