POP for Quickstar's comment.

POP.

I do agree with you quickstar, but in this instance it seems like it was an accident that the clam died.

"Unfortunately, by the time its true age had been established Ming was already dead. But the scientists aged the 3.4in clam from its shell which like trees has a layer or ring of growth for every year that the animal has been alive."

If it's in the water and it's lived for that long, obviously something was going right. Then people decided "let's take the clam out of the water." How can that be an accident?
Pop for quickstar.

"The record-breaking shellfish, 31 years older than the previous oldest animal, another clam, was caught last year when scientists from the Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences were dredging the seabed north of Iceland.

The "Arctica islandica" was among a haul of 3,000 empty shells and 34 live molluscs taken to the laboratory."

Animals are captured all the time for scientific study. From reading the article, if they would've known the clam was that old they would've kept it alive. It was an accident that the clam died.