There appears to be a gender attractiveness gap, but it fades away with age.
The discovery happened in the routine course of an Iñupiat subsistence hunt off the coast near Utqiaġvik, the northernmost settlement in Alaska. The whale, a 49-foot male, had been killed in May 2007 by hunters working under the quota system administered by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the International Whaling Commission. The Iñupiat have hunted bowhead whales for at least two thousand years, and subsistence whaling continues under tightly regulated annual quotas. The whale was being processed for meat and blubber, in the traditional method, on the sea ice near the village.
Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management, was on site as part of his long-standing research collaboration with the Iñupiat whaling community. As the hunters carved the carcass with chainsaws, George noticed an unusual fragment of metal lodged in the bone between the whale’s neck and shoulder blade. The fragment was approximately 3.5 inches long, arrow-shaped, and recognisable to George as something other than modern equipment. He sent it to John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and a leading authority on the history of 19th-century Arctic whaling.
Bockstoce identified the fragment as the explosive tip of a bomb lance, a patented Victorian-era whaling weapon manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The particular design and notch pattern allowed him to date its manufacture to between 1885 and 1895, give or take a few years. The bomb lance had been embedded in the whale’s body for approximately 120 years.
The whale had been alive when Queen Victoria was still on the British throne.
The bomb lance was designed to detonate after embedding itself in a whale’s body, with the explosion intended to deliver a fatal internal wound. In the case of the 2007 whale, the device had either failed to detonate fully or the explosion had missed the vital organs the design was meant to reach. The fragment had lodged in bone in the shoulder region, which is well outside the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels. The whale’s blubber, which on bowhead whales reaches up to 50 centimetres thick, would have absorbed much of the residual impact. Bowhead whales also have exceptionally efficient wound-healing capabilities, which the genetic literature on the species has since linked to specific molecular adaptations.
The whale survived. It continued to feed, migrate, and presumably reproduce for another 12 decades, carrying the metal fragment as a permanent passenger embedded in its shoulder bone, until it was killed by a modern projectile from the next generation of the same indigenous community that had likely been the original target of the 19th-century hunters.
The bomb lance fragment was not the only evidence of the whale’s extreme age. Since 1999, a team led by the same Craig George, working with the chemist Jeffrey Bada at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been using a different method to estimate bowhead whale ages, published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. The method depends on a chemical process called aspartic acid racemization. In humans and other mammals, the aspartic acid in the protein-rich nucleus of the eye lens is laid down in one specific molecular orientation, called the L-isomer, when the lens forms in the developing fetus. From that point onward, the molecules slowly convert to the alternative orientation, called the D-isomer, at a temperature-dependent rate that does not change throughout the animal’s lifetime. By measuring the ratio of D to L in the eye lens of a deceased whale, researchers can estimate how many years have elapsed since the lens first formed.
The George and Bada study applied this method to 48 bowhead whale eye globes collected from subsistence hunts between 1978 and 1997. Of the 48 samples, 42 produced usable age estimates. Most of the whales were in the expected range for marine mammals, between 20 and 60 years. A small number, however, returned ages well above 100 years. One sample produced an estimated age of 211 years, with a standard error of approximately 35 years either way. The figure was extraordinary enough that the researchers checked the calibration repeatedly before publishing.
The 2007 whale’s age, on aspartic acid racemization, was independently estimated at approximately 130 years. The Victorian harpoon embedded in its shoulder, with its independently traceable manufacturing date, confirmed the estimate within the method’s standard error. The convergence of the two independent dating methods is now considered, in the peer-reviewed literature, one of the strongest confirmations of bowhead longevity ever obtained.
In 2015, a team led by Michael Keane at the University of Liverpool, working with João Pedro de Magalhães, Craig George, and a consortium of researchers across multiple universities, published the first complete sequencing of the bowhead whale genome in the journal Cell Reports. The team compared the bowhead genome to the genomes of other cetaceans and other mammals to identify the molecular mechanisms that allow the bowhead to live for two centuries while other large whales rarely exceed 100 years.
The findings identified specific genetic adaptations that distinguish the bowhead. The first was in the ERCC1 gene, which encodes a protein involved in DNA repair, particularly the repair of DNA strands damaged by oxidative stress and ultraviolet radiation. The bowhead has a unique variant of ERCC1 not found in any other cetacean, with mutations consistent with enhanced repair capacity. The second adaptation was a duplication of the PCNA gene, which encodes a protein essential for DNA replication and damage repair. The duplication is rare in mammals and is associated, in other species, with reduced rates of cancer. The third adaptation was a set of changes in genes involved in cell-cycle regulation, several of which appear to slow the rate at which cells become cancerous.
The Keane team noted that bowhead whales have approximately a thousand times more cells than humans, which by basic statistical reasoning should make them roughly a thousand times more likely to develop cancer over a given lifespan. They do not. Bowhead whales show very low rates of cancer until extremely advanced age, despite their enormous cell number and their two-century lifespan. The genome data suggests that the bowhead has evolved a suite of molecular cancer-resistance mechanisms that compensate for what should otherwise be a substantial cellular risk.
The findings have implications well beyond bowhead biology. The molecular mechanisms that allow the bowhead to live for 200 years without developing cancer are precisely the mechanisms that human ageing research has been searching for. Several research groups are currently working to characterise the bowhead-specific gene variants in laboratory mouse models, with the aim of identifying whether the same mechanisms could be transferred to other mammalian systems.
One of the more interesting threads in the scientific literature on bowhead longevity is that the peer-reviewed findings have largely confirmed something the Iñupiat had been saying for generations. Iñupiat oral tradition describes bowhead whales as living for “two human lifetimes”, a description that maps directly to the modern peer-reviewed estimate of 150 to 200 years. Iñupiat whalers have for centuries recognised specific individual whales by their scars, behaviour, and markings, and have passed observations of particular whales through multiple generations of the same hunting families. Several of the whales that have produced the oldest scientific age estimates were identifiable to Iñupiat hunters as animals their grandparents had also seen.
The recognition that indigenous ecological knowledge had pre-empted the scientific finding has been increasingly explicit in the peer-reviewed literature. Craig George, who has worked with the Iñupiat whaling community for more than three decades, has been a co-author on most of the bowhead longevity papers and has consistently credited the original observations to Iñupiat hunters. The 2007 harpoon discovery itself was made possible by the close working relationship between George and the hunters who killed the whale.
Several methodological caveats apply to the bowhead longevity literature.
The aspartic acid racemization method has substantial standard errors, particularly for the oldest whales. The 211-year estimate, with its ±35-year standard error, could in principle range from approximately 175 to 245 years. The method is sensitive to the temperature at which the eye lens formed and to the calibration of the underlying chemistry. The original George and Bada 1999 paper acknowledged these uncertainties explicitly. Subsequent refinements, including a 2013 update by Cheryl Rosa and colleagues in Marine Mammal Science, have improved the precision but have not eliminated the underlying limitation.
The peer-reviewed lifespan estimate of “over 200 years” is therefore a strong central tendency rather than an exact figure for any particular whale. What is established beyond reasonable doubt is that bowhead whales routinely live past 100 years and that the oldest individuals in the population probably live to at least 150 years. The exact upper bound is less precisely known.
The 2007 harpoon-and-whale finding is, by contrast, one of the most precisely datable longevity records in the literature on any wild mammal, because the harpoon’s manufacturing date is independently verifiable from historical records.
Several things follow from the bowhead longevity evidence that are worth saying clearly.
The first is that the longest-lived mammal on Earth is not a primate, a rodent, or a domesticated species. It is a baleen whale that lives almost its entire life under the ice of the Arctic Ocean, in conditions where systematic study is extraordinarily difficult. The discovery of bowhead longevity required the convergence of indigenous ecological knowledge, modern molecular biology, and the chance survival of a 19th-century weapon inside a 21st-century whale.
The second is that the bowhead’s longevity is not, on the current scientific evidence, an accidental feature of cold-water marine life. It is the result of specific molecular adaptations, including enhanced DNA repair and cancer suppression, that have been identified at the genome level. These mechanisms are now being studied as potential models for extending healthy lifespan in humans.
The third is that some of the bowhead whales currently feeding in the Arctic Ocean were already adult animals when the United States entered the First World War. The whales swimming under the ice near Utqiaġvik today include individuals that have lived through the entire span of modern industrial history, the development of motorised whaling, the near-extinction of their own species, the moratorium that protected them, and the slow recovery of their population in the late twentieth century.
They will, on the available evidence, continue to swim under the ice well after every human alive today is dead.
The 19th-century whaler from New Bedford who fired that bomb lance in 1890 had no way of knowing that his target would still be alive in 2007. The whale that carried his weapon had no way of knowing that the same indigenous community that had likely sent the original hunters would, more than a century later, kill the same whale with a more modern weapon.
The Iñupiat, on the available oral evidence, were not surprised.
The post A 49-foot bowhead whale killed by Iñupiat hunters in May 2007 was found to have been carrying a Victorian-era harpoon in its shoulder for approximately 120 years, evidence that the whale was at least 115 years old at the time of its death, because bowhead whales are the longest-lived mammals on Earth, with peer-reviewed lifespan estimates exceeding 200 years appeared first on Space Daily.
For millions of years, some of Earth’s earliest animals barely changed. They lived, grew, and spread across the seafloor, but evolution seemed stuck in slow motion. Now, a new study suggests that the reason may have been surprisingly simple: these ancient creatures were reproducing without sex. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found evidence […]
The post A lack of sex may have delayed the explosion of life, study finds appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
Scientists in Switzerland have developed an innovative new material made from food industry waste that could help remove carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the atmosphere more efficiently and at a lower cost. The research, led by scientists at ETH Zurich and published in PNAS, uses proteins extracted from waste products generated during dairy and tofu […]
The post Scientists turn food waste into powerful beads that capture carbon from the air appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
Thousands of years ago, Scotland’s early inhabitants were building mysterious artificial islands in lakes throughout the region—and now archaeologists have uncovered evidence that reveals these curious aquatic features to be far older than once thought.
Scattered throughout Scotland’s ancient lochs, these curious structures—known as crannogs—have long intrigued archaeologists and historians, partially due to the questions about their age.
Now, artifacts recovered from these human-built islands are pushing back the timescales on their construction, causing researchers to have to reconsider the origins of one of the most enigmatic lacustrine features in the British Isles.
Crannogs have been known to archaeologists for some time, with some of the earliest extensive explorations of these features undertaken beginning more than a century ago by Odo Blundell, a monk at Fort Augustus Abbey.
Constructed mostly from stone and timber, speculations about their creation extend to as early as the Bronze Age, although most scholars believe these curious features were likely to have been an invention of the Iron Age.
However, a surprising recent discovery is now challenging that presumption, revealing that some of these artificial islands date back to more than 5,000 years ago, having been built during Scotland’s Neolithic era.
The story began to unfold in 2012 when local diver Chris Murray was exploring a crannog near the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. There, he discovered fragments of ancient pottery that experts at the National Museum of Scotland later examined, revealing an astonishing discovery: the remains of artifacts unequivocally associated with the Neolithic period.
The implication was obvious: for Neolithic pottery to have been found on this crannog would indicate it must have been constructed thousands of years earlier than the past dating of these artificial islands.
The discovery prompted a deeper look at the region’s ancient artificial islands, which soon revealed additional evidence of their Neolithic provenance. During the research, Stephanie Blankshein, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, and colleagues discovered that organic materials and artifacts from several sites across Scotland’s Outer Hebrides indicated these crannogs were likely built sometime between 4,000 and 2,500 BCE.
At least 11 crannogs in the region, Blankshein and her colleagues say, were created during the Neolithic period, pushing back the date of their construction to as far back as six thousand years ago.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the team’s findings involves what it reveals about the ingenuity of the early farming communities in the British Isles, since the new dating of these prehistoric artificial islands indicates that they must have been constructed within just a few centuries of when their ancient builders arrived in the region.
Such findings align well with past genetic studies, which indicate that the region’s Neolithic populations likely descended from farmers who made their way from the Near East through Europe, and eventually settled in the British Isles, where they made their new homes by the sea.
It remains unclear, however, whether the construction of crannogs had been an innovation that occurred after they arrived in Britain, or if this had been a much earlier practice these people brought with them.
Among the most remarkable crannog sites is one found at Loch Bhorgastail on the Isle of Lewis. This artificial island was initially believed to have been primarily built from stone, with some evidence of timber used as reinforcement.
However, underwater excavations by Blankshein and her colleagues soon uncovered something very surprising hidden below the crannog: a massive timber platform supporting the entire structure.
“As excavation advanced, it quickly became apparent that the terrestrial and underwater components formed a single continuous structure spanning both environments and could not be treated separately,” Blankshein and her colleagues write in a recent study detailing their research at the site.
During their underwater surveys, the team discovered that the wooden foundation extended beneath the entire island and dated to between 3500 and 3300 BCE. Measuring approximately 75 feet (23 meters) across, the platform may have originally sat in shallow water or even remained dry during parts of the year.
“Loch Bhorgastail provided a rare opportunity to develop, test, and refine a workflow capable of achieving terrestrial-grade accuracy underwater,” the research team writes. “The site demonstrates the potential of shallow-water archaeology to bridge the land–water interface while elevating the precision and reliability of underwater recording.”
A fundamental question that remains about these curious Neolithic constructions has to do with what their purpose was.
One clue may arrive in the form of residues found on the recent pottery discoveries at several of these sites, which indicate they were used to transport food. This may suggest the crannogs were locations where ancient people prepared and consumed meals, possibly during ceremonial gatherings.
However, it is also possible that these ancient structures served multiple purposes, ranging from sites for communal feasting to possible locations for meetings.
Despite the lingering questions about their use by Scotland’s ancient inhabitants, Blankshein and her colleagues saw these marvelous Neolithic structures as an ideal target for high-resolution shallow-water photogrammetry, which became the focus of her team’s recent research.
“Coastal, riverine, and lacustrine environments have played a central role in the development of human societies, yet locating and documenting this record of activity in littoral environments has proven difficult,” the team writes.
As a result of their research, the team’s findings, combined with recent archaeological discoveries from over the last decade or more, help to shed new light on Britain’s ancient past, while advancing the development of new archaeological approaches. This includes groundbreaking methods for creating 3D models of shallow underwater sites, which the team achieved by using paired action cameras.
As investigations continue, Blankshein and her colleagues suspect many more Neolithic crannogs remain hidden beneath the waters of Scotland and Ireland, and with their discovery and investigation, the potential for further advancements in understanding Europe’s earliest farming societies.
The team’s recent paper, “At the Water’s Edge: Photogrammetry in Extreme Shallow-Water Environments,” appeared in Advances in Archaeological Science.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
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