If there's a time-stamp on human life, two Canadian biologists say they haven't found it yet — and speculate the already-increasing life span of humans could keep going up "far into the foreseeable future."
In a new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, biologists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, dispute research published in October 2016 that determined the upper limit of human age is peaking at around 115 years.
"We just don't know what the age limit might be," according to biologist Siegfried Hekimi, CBC News reported. "In fact, by extending trend lines, we can show that maximum and average lifespans could continue to increase far into the foreseeable future."
Hekimi and fellow researcher Bryan Hughes take issue with the methods used in the 2016 study, which looked at the lifespan of the longest-living individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan for each year since 1968 – and reanalyzed the data.
"We show that there is no plateau," Hekimi told CBC News, adding no one has yet demonstrated that the human body has an expiration date, or that internal mechanisms can be exhausted.
"Such biological processes exist, but it doesn't mean these biological processes function like a clock that goes ding ding ding," he told the outlet. "There is nothing to say they run out at 115."
Average lifespans have been slowly increasing, though American lifespans have leveled off in recent years, USA Today reported.
In 1900 , the average lifespan in the United States was about 47 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 1970, life expectancy was about 71 years old, increasing slightly year by year until 2015, when for the first time in two decades it dipped to 78.8 years, USA Today reported.
"Three hundred years ago, many people lived short lives," Hekimi said, USA Today reported. "If we would have told them that one day most might live up to 100, they would said we were crazy."
The verified oldest person ever, 122-year-old Jeanne Calment of France, died in 1997. The current title of world's oldest person currently belongs to 117-year-old Violet Mosses Brown.
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