X-Message-Number: 9802
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 05:28:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug Skrecky <>
Subject: Methuselah Whales?

 Spotted in the the May 28, 1998 issue of the Globe and Mail newspaper.

 Methuselah Whales?

    New research suggests Arctic bowhead whales may live beyond 150 years,
 making them the longest-lived mammals on Earth, writes Ben Spiess in USA
 Today. Since 1981, Inuit whalers have found six harpoon heads in bowhead
 whales that were made of stone or ivory. "The types of points they've
 found in these whales were gone by the 1890s," said archeologist Glenn
 Sheehan. "It's likely these points are from before that - perhaps the
 mid-1800s." In a study of amino-acid aging in bowhead eyes, marine
 chemist Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography found that
 four samples out of 42 were more than 100 years old and one whale was
 estimated to be 180 years old. (His technique, "aspartic acid
 racemization," has a range of error of 12 to 50 years.)

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