Russia's oldest woman died in northwest Yakutia on Sunday. This May Semennikova, born in 1890, would have marked her 118th birthday.
The Russian centenarian had claimed to be the world's oldest person since August 2007. However, her age was not verified by Guinness World Records.
Semennikova was an Evenk woman, one of indigenous peoples of Russia's North, who was born into a nomadic family and spent her youth hunting and deer farming.
The woman said she liked to eat with her average dinner consisting of boiled meat, sour cream tea with milk, jam, bread and butter, lasting for two or three hours.
In her last days, Semennikova maintained her remarkable memory, although she lost her hearing and eyesight. She was married twice, and her first husband Alexei was 27 years her junior.
She outlived all her children and adopted three more. She leaves more than a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Last December the planet's oldest living person, Grigoriy Nestor, from Ukraine, died at the age of 116. According to church documents and his passport, Nestor was born on March 15, 1891.
According to the Guinness World Records, today the world's oldest living person is 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico who assumed this title after Elizabeth Bolden, an African American woman, died at the age of 116 years and 118 days in 2006.
