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For a creature that isn’t born, but ‘settles’, Ming went out with a furor that more than made up for his subtle beginnings.  His life began as his mother; unknown except as another ocean quahog or clam, shot the pin-head size Ming out from within her two tightly clamped shells in a burst of water, under cover of the shadow of a fish passing overhead. Ming  attached himself to the body of that fish, absorbing nutrients for a time, until he was mature enough to drift away and start the first and only excursion of his life.  He drifted where the currents took him,  gradually settling into the sandy bottom where he would begin his sedentary life of sifting nutrients from the ocean water. He earned the nick-name Ming because the time of his settling was during the latter part of the Chinese Ming dynasty, around 1600.  As he settled and siphoned, the creatures in the world above were far from sedentary.  The gentleman who is known as the world’s greatest writer was writing Hamlet and Macbeth.  Galileo had taken up the cause of Copernicus but was unable to convince society that the world did not revolve around the earth.   Rembrandt and Rubens painted the old world, and a ship set sail and landed in a new world. He lived nameless and anonymously until the 1700’s, when he was assigned a Latin appellation by Carl Linnaeus.  Linnaeus, who often characterized his life’s work by saying ‘God created, Linnaeus organized’, created a system for identifying all living creatures.  He placed man in the Hominid family, and assigned him the genus and species of Homo sapiens.   Ming was placed in the family Mollusca, and was the only creature placed in the genus Artica.  His existence was further clarified by assigning him the species islandica, due to his preference for the cold waters of northern climes. He remained in place, absorbing oxygen from the water, filtering phytoplankton for sustenance and escaping predation from Cod.  Each year a new layer of calcium was deposited on his shell.  He siphoned in obscurity, off the coast of Iceland, until his discovery October 2007 by a group of climate change researchers from Bangor University in North Wales.   These researchers use the annual growth lines on the clam shell, much like the rings of a tree, to learn about ocean temperatures, water quality and food availability. Ming was silent as the scientist sliced through his shell, discovering to his surprise that he had just ended the life of the oldest known living animal.  In death, Ming joined the company of the many creatures who in one way or another sacrificed their lives in the name of science. There is one, among that almost endless list, with whom Ming could have an interesting conversation, could either of them converse.  That creature would be Prometheus, at one time the oldest living creature on earth. Prometheus was a bristlecone pine in eastern Nevada, in an area under study by University of North Carolina graduate students from in the early 1960’s.  They were taking samples of trees and analyzing the ring patterns as part of their research on climate issues, among other things.  There have been many retellings of the tale, and the details vary, but the end result is agreed upon.  The bristlecone pine under question was cut down for further study.  It was known to be an ancient tree before its felling, and the ring count confirmed it be about 5,000 years old.  Counting the rings was a weeklong endeavor. Prometheus was silent as he was felled, just as was Ming.  Prometheus’ felling started a furor of protests which resulted in the protection of all Bristlecone pines, living or not. Prometheus’ axe man recently died, long after publishing the gaining his PhD, tenure and a long history of research and respectas well, and not a word of Prometheus was mentioned in his obituraries.  Ming’s demise resulted in a few weeks of breathless conversation, flurried emails and the gradual realization that his discovery, declaration of  age and his demise were concurrent. he was nedcssarily sacrificed during the process of determing his age.  At the time of his death, he was the oldest living animal on record.  Upon his demise, he joined the ranks of other old-timers, including a 4,800 year old bristlecone pine chopped down in 1964 in order to retrieve a drilling tool used by gradeuate students taking bore samples.  He and the pine are the only two who met their fate at the hands of researchers.