| Summary: | This massive rise in the life expectancy of the population was due simply to the evolution of the population’s general understanding. Hygiene practices improved, immunization practices skyrocketed, and infant mortality rates dropped, all the while launching modern humans to the forefront of understanding the relativity of human aging. (2) When discussing ageing we are referencing the trials and wear that our bodies are subject to through the course of our lives, the same wear and tear Ponce de Leon longed to remedy. This desire to remain young and fit is just as relevant now as it was when de Leon began his search for answers 503 years ago. Coincidently, as the General was making his historic voyage to the tropics, 5,436 kilometers to the north, deep beneath the Arctic Ocean around the Greenland coast, an animal was born and more impressively is still alive today, belonging to the classification of Somniosus microcephalus: the Greenland Shark. (4) [photo] Somniosus microcephalus: The Greenland shark. (5) A simple question one might ask is “what makes a fish what it is?” The common response might sound a little like this: a fish lives in water and receives oxygen by filtering it out of water through its gills, and it has fins to steady and propel it through its environment. Its body is covered by scales, skin or boney plates, its heart has two chambers, and finally, it lays eggs. All this is the vernacular scientists use to describe the fish. (6) That being said, sharks are classified in this same fish category, yet all the above scarcely could describe this animal adequately. For example, sharks don’t have skin, nor do they have scales or bone plates. Rather, they 26
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