Greenland Sharks Mature Later Than Any Other Known Vertebrate

This shark does not reach adulthood for over a century.

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Most commercial fish species mature within just a few years, not centuries.

Radiocarbon age modeling indicates Greenland sharks may not reach sexual maturity until approximately 120 to 150 years old, the latest maturity ever recorded in a vertebrate species.

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💥 Impact (click to read)

That means a shark born before the American Civil War could still be biologically juvenile today, compressing human generational timelines into a single phase of its life cycle.

Such extreme delayed maturity makes the species extraordinarily vulnerable to overfishing, because removing one mature female erases more than a century of biological development.

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