by Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | February 19, 2015 10:23am ET
If you thought humans were late bloomers, consider the great white shark.
Male great white sharks take 26 years to reach sexual maturity, and females take a whopping 33 years to be ready to have baby sharks, according to a new study. That's decades longer than previous estimates, which suggested that females reach maturity somewhere between 7 and 13 years of age and that males can start reproducing when they're between 4 and 10 years old.
The findings suggest that the populations of these apex predators may grow even more slowly than scientists had previously thought, thus making them even more vulnerable to threats, the researchers said.
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