There are many animals that are old. Tortoises can live over 150 years and the tuatara—a New Zealand reptile—can live for over 100 years. But my favorite example of a long-lived creature is the bowhead whale. It's fascinating to me not just because whales are interesting, but specifically because of how we learned that this species of whale could live for more than 100 years. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Bowheads were once thought to live 60 to 70 years, similar to other whales. However, discoveries of 19th century ivory, slate, and jade spear points in freshly killed whales in 1993, 1995, 1999, and 2007 triggered research based on structures in the whale's eye, suggesting at least some individuals reached 150–200 years old (another report claimed a 90-year-old female was still fertile). The amino acid racemization process has provided the scientific basis for these claims. This process is controversial and has failed to correlate well with other dating methods.

In May 2007, a 15 m (49 ft) specimen caught off the Alaskan coast was discovered with the head of an explosive harpoon embedded deep under its neck blubber. The 3.5 inches (89 mm) arrow-shaped projectile was manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a major whaling center, around 1890, suggesting the animal may have survived a similar hunt more than a century ago.

In other words, we can use the rate of change in harpoon technology to explore how old some bowhead whales are. There are some whales that have survived attacks from harpoons manufactured in the same city where Moby Dick begins: New Bedford.

Increasingly, the technological and the natural are becoming intertwined. We see this in the discussion around terming the current stretch of time the Anthropocene, based on humanity's effect on our planet and its geology. The systems we are building weave together ecosystems and infrastructure, neurology and software, data centers and weather. Everything is increasingly interconnected.

We are also seeing the advent of long-term datasets, what I term long data. At last we have the convergence of these trends: evidence of long-term historical change in technology, through an exploration of biology, and vice versa. This is reminiscent of how radiocarbon dating requires knowledge of historical nuclear testing, as well as other human activities. Or how the Industrial Revolution affected insect evolution.

Technology and biology can be physically interconnected, along the lines of cyborgs. But they can also be connected with long data, through a deep knowledge of our technological and biological history.