Century-old Greenland shark found in Cornwall died from meningitis

On a Cornish shore near Newlyn Harbour, a creature that had lived a century and was still considered young by the standards of her kind came to rest in the shallows — the second Greenland shark ever recovered from British waters. Scientists who examined her found meningitis, a disease never before documented in the species, raising quiet but urgent questions about what pressures the deep ocean may now be placing on its oldest inhabitants. Her death, though singular, opened a rare window into a biology so remote and long-lived that it sits at the very edge of human comprehension.