Nature: Radiocarbon dating suggests some deep-sea coral may live for thousands of years.Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory Some species of coral can live for over 4,000 years — longer than any other animal that lives in the ocean, a study has found. Uncertainty over how to date coral makes estimates of their lifespan contentious. A radiocarbon-dating study published in 2006 by Brendan Roark, then at Stanford University in California, suggested that living colonies of Gerardia corals …