The Rev Dodgson said:

esselte said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

That all makes sense for animals like elephants and humans, but I’m struggling to see how it could make a development period of 150 years the one that results in the greatest number of offspring who have offspring.

Evolution optimizes for the successful long term propagation of genes, not for maximum number of offspring. Imagine a 10 year old Greenland Shark has 100 babies with 1 percent survival rates, then it dies young leaving one offspring to continue propagating its genes. Compare that to a 150 year old shark which has 1 baby at 150 years, a second baby at 160 years etc, with all of those offspring surviving long enough to, themselves, have offspring.

FWIW from what I’m reading the Greenland shark is considered a very extreme case of K-type selection, which might be why it seems intuitively implausible.

Yes, your final sentence is exactly what I am saying.

It is hard to see how sharks with 150 years development could be much more productive of offspring growing to adulthood than say 50 years development.

Especially since the offspring have to survive for 3 x times longer before they start proceeding.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that this is evidence that God did it, or that the whole evolution theory might be wrong.

I’m just interested in how it works in this particular case.

Greenland sharks have an extremely low metabolic rate. A shark that grows to sexual maturity in 50 years will have a higher metabolism than the 150 years shark. Higher metabolism means it needs more food so it can grow its body quicker. In an environment where food is scarce that fast growing shark is at a disadvantage compared to the slow growing shark; the fast growing shark may quickly exhaust its food supply and starve whilst the slower growing one isn’t even hungry. The time taken to reach maturity isn’t really a factor in the case of these sharks. They have no predators, can survive temporary reductions in food supply etc – a newborn Greenland shark has a very high chance of making it to 150 years old adulthood.