It’s a true ‘living fossil’: a fish that can live up to 100 years

It’s huge, it has survived the era of the gods dinosaurs And he can live too 100 years. This is the colacanth, a species of fish that was thought to be extinct. On the other hand, a study published in Current Biology found that this type of animal also comes to century old. A very rare abyssal fish, its shape seems to have never changed for millions of years, even today, very similar to prehistoric fish Ancestral For this reason, it was consideredliving fossilMysterious and strange species, it has a very slow metabolism and can be pregnancy last for 5 years.

A study of 100 years of coelacanth

According to the French scientists who conducted the study, female colacanth do not reach تصل sexual maturity To the end 50 yearsWhile males are sexually mature between 40 and 69 years. The researchers also speculated that Pregnancy It can last about five years. The species has been around ever since 400 million years And for a long time, they were considered extinct, until 1938, the gods Hollow Alive was found off South Africa. These animals will also grow very slowly to human size. Until now they were supposed to live about 20 years, but new research has succeeded in determining that Vita Much longer and can rise to a century.

Standard technique applied to dating Fish Commercially speaking, scientists have estimated that coelacanths live nearly 100 years. In the past, their life span was determined by large numbers lines on a specific type of hollow. Instead, the French researchers found that smaller lines that can only be seen should be counted using polarized light. Bruno Hernandi, a marine evolutionary ecologist at the French Marine Research Institute and co-author of the study, explained that the polarized light revealed five smaller streaks for each of the larger streaks. They concluded that smaller lines were better associated with a one-year-old age, indicating that the older sample they studied was 84 years.

analysis two embryosInstead, the team calculated that they had both five years. Hence the hypothesis that the pregnancy of these fish lasts for at least five years. even if you were Hollow They are not genetically similar to other creatures in the abyss, such as sharks and rays, their aging will be quite slow. In fact, even sharks can live for hundreds of years.

Marine animals continue to make interesting discoveries between ancient and long-lived species and others with special and curious characteristics such as Mollusks with special teeth Which Elephant fish talking to each other.

Stefania Bernardini