Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez, a former musician and coal miner certified by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest man, has died at 112.

Guinness consultant Robert Young said Mr Sanchez-Blazquez died at a nursing home in Grand Island, New York.

Nicknamed "Shorty", Mr Sanchez-Blazquez became the world's oldest man when Jiroemon Kimura died in June at 116.

Mr Sanchez-Blazquez was born on June 8 1901 in the village of El Tejado de Bejar in Spain. He moved to Cuba at 17, then to the United States in 1920 where he worked in the coal mines of Lynch, Kentucky. He eventually moved to the Niagara Falls area.

He had two children, seven grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.

Guinness says the world's oldest person is a woman, 115-year-old Misao Okawa of Japan.

Mr Young said 90 per cent of all supercentenarians were women and Mr Sanchez-Blazquez had been the only man born in 1901 with proof of birth.

Arturo Licata, 111, of Italy, is now the leading candidate to be officially recognised by Guinness as the current world's oldest man and Guinness will make a pronouncement on him at a later date.

The oldest authenticated person was Jeanne Louise Calment of France, who died at 122 years and 164 days.