RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. The next time you dip into a bowl of clam chowder, consider this. You might be consuming a clam that has lived through a lot of history. We know this because a mollusk named Ming was 507 years old when it was dredged up in the ocean off Iceland a few years ago. When they first counted the rings on the shell of this common clam, scientists at Bangor University in Wales named it Ming in honor of the Chinese dynasty it was born into. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.