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Comment by rob74

5 years ago

I would slightly correct the statement in the article: "The World’s Oldest [Known] Land Animal Ever". But after reading through it, I'm afraid that animals living in the wild (which are not fed and cared for) probably wouldn't reach this age, so the statement may actually be correct...

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rob74

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mfer  5 years ago

It's the oldest known land animal in modern times.

For example, a tortoise could have lived a couple thousand years ago and lived a couple hundred years. The people of that time may have known about it over the generations. Yet, we today have no record.

"ever" is said a lot but it's hard to substantiate.

samatman  5 years ago

The Testudine lineage is more than 200 million years old.

I'm confident that some tortoise, somewhere, lived in isolated splendour longer than Jonathan. It's just a numbers game, holding 190 up against 200 million and squinting a bit.

Not to take anything away from the old fellow! He's earned his laurels.