Most people are intrigued by the tremendous age of trees and their suitability for environment and climate reconstructions. Aquatic mollusks, however, have not entered the limelight. Few know that mollusks hold the record for animal¹s longevity. For example, the bivalve Margaritifera spp. reaches 116 years and Arctica islandica (bivalve mollusk, North Atlantic) lives up to 230 years (!), long enough to build mollusk masterchronologies. Even less is known about the high sensitivity and extremely high spatio-temporal resolution at which mollusks record their environment. Most bivalves add one growth ring per day throughout the year. Ring widths and geochemical properties are closely related to environmental conditions; shell chemistry is not re-mobilized. Mollusks occur in a very broad range of ecological settings: shelf and deep-sea, coastal areas, rivers, estuarine environments and lakes, near the poles, at the equator and all latitudes in between. The analysis and interpretation of "clam"-ring series (sclerochronology) has been modeled on tree-ring analysis and makes use of modified dendrochronological techniques. However, dendrochronology and sclerochronology ARE NOT separate fields of study! Integrated growth band studies using a broad range of accretionary skeletons will allow new questions to be asked, for example, land-sea interaction in coastal areas, correlation of sub-annual time-series (wood density profiles and mollusk chronologies with daily resolution), or filling out the missing seasons in the tree-ring record.

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