One Greenland shark may be older than the United States.

The part that checks out ↘

It really happened.

Greenland sharks have no hard structures that are normally used to age fish. So in 2016, scientists radiocarbon-dated the core of their eye lenses, tissue that forms before birth and never changes. The largest shark in the study was estimated to be 392 years old — and, with high probability, at least 272. That places its birth before 1776.

A single living animal can span the entire history of a nation. The evidence for it was hidden in the one part of the body that never renews.