Meet the oldest living thing on Earth

[Provost Harrison]

The thing is though, they had to chop it in half and count the rings...therefore it won't get any older than 10 000 years

[DRoseDARs]

You do know they can drill small, pencil-sized holes into trees (called tree coring) these days, right?

[PLATO]

Does Methuselah still rule???

Umeaa's professor of physical geography, Leif Kullmann, said the spruce's stems or trunks had a lifespan of around 600 years, but as soon as one died, a cloned stem could emerge from the root system.

Methuselah (estimated germination 2832 BC) is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California, which was 4,789 years old when sampled in 1957 by Schulman and Harlan. It is one of the oldest known non-clonal living organism still alive, at the age of about 4,839 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree)


*Bolding and underlining added by me.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
You do know they can drill small, pencil-sized holes into trees (called tree coring) these days, right?

So that's how they make pencils? How do they get the graphite down the middle?

[DRoseDARs]

Gnomes.

[Verto]

Not very Ent-ish at all

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by PLATO
Does Methuselah still rule???

The root system of the Swedish spruce is older- it's just below ground.

Actually I've since found out that there are even older living organisms- Creosote bushes have been carbon-dated to 11,000-12,000 years old.