Curiosity #30 What's The Oldest Living thing In The World?

curiousity (55)in #science • 7 years ago

Welcome my dear Steemian friends to a new episode of Curiosity! A series in which we will answer some of the questions that makes us all curious.

The oldest human being that we know of is Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 Years. She was born in 1875 and died in 1997 which is time when the Internet was already invented. But the Longest Human life is still nothing compared to some of the oldest things on Earth. Earth is packed with really really old things. Most of them are fossils . in other words dead but not all of them are dead. Proving accurately the age of long-lived living things is a very hard task. And we still don't know the nature's most of the senior citizens but what we do no is most of them are trees.

Lets Find Out , which trees , and how are they the longest living organisms.

So, How the Age is Measured?

Measuring the age of trees is not an easy task. It takes serious time and skill. This can be also a traditional detective work. Scientists very carefully look through all the previous records to find out if the particular tree was growing back then. There are many old painting , records, books, art works that are used as the source for seeing whether the tree existed back then.

But the more scientific way of measuring the age of trees is by counting the rings in its trunk. Its also known as dendrochronology. There is one ring per year growth rate. This method works for certain types of trees. The problem here is , to count the ring, the tree needs to be cut down.

Fig: Tree Rings

The Solution to this is Arboriculturalists use something called increment borer. It is a drill that takes out the core of the tree without fatally damaging the tree. Which is finally used to count the rings. Its a very delicate work actually, back in 1960s scientist broke off interior of the Bristlecone pine tree. But they used it to their advantage and found out that it was actually 5000 years old.

Now, Whats the Oldest living Thing On Earth?

Well, there is a List called "The old list" which contains the list of officially dated ancient trees. Some of the names from that list are Scared Fig tree of Sri Lanka which is atleast 2222 years old. Next is Patagonian cypress tree in Chile which, which is 3,627 years old, also A Great Basin bristlecone pine in California is estimated to be 5000 years old.

But 5000 years old living thing he oldest living thing ever? well the answer is no. Well it is not actually a single tree but a Clonal tree.

Fig: Pando Tree.

The name of the tree is Pando which means "I spread" in Latin. It can be found in In Fishlake National Park in Utah in the US. It is also one of the largest trees. It is so large that it can be actually confused with forest. It is as the size of the Vatican City but sprung from just one seed all over the years.

Fig: Single Root System of Pando

There are estimated of about 50,000 tree trunks supported by a single vast root stock. Accurately estimating the age of this tree is a difficult task but. Clonal trees grows in all direction and regenerate wherever they go. This means it would't give you a accurate estimation of the age. Scientist got over this problem by equating size to age. It's not an accurate solution but by this method the age of Pando is estimated to be staggering 80,000 years old.

So indeed , this tree is the oldest living thing on Earth.

So thats it for this Episode Guy, Thank for reading this episode of Curiosity! If you enjoyed it fell free to upvote, resteem and comment. And do check out other works by me.

Stay Curious.