The oldest living things on earth - The oldest plants organisms lifeforms

Description:

Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world's oldest continuously living organisms -- from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago's coast to an "underground forest" in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture.

About Rachel Sussman

Rachel Sussman is on a quest to celebrate the resilience of life by identifying and photographing continuous-living organisms that are 2,000 years or older, all around the world.

For the past five years, Rachel Sussman has traveled around the globe photographing organisms that have lived for more than 2,000 years. From 500,000-year-old actinobacteria in the Siberian permafrost a lone spruce standing on a mostly barren mountain in Sweden, her images capture both the robustness and fragility of life. While these organisms' longevity dwarfs even that of human civilization, they all depend on ecosystems in fine balance -- a balance thrown into question by human encroachment and climate change.

Sussman's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe in venues including the Museum of Natural History.

TEDGlobal 2010, Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things, Filmed Jul 2010

Background information

List of long-living organisms

This is a list of the oldest individual lifeforms. This is usually defined as:

    * Having a longer life span than any other known individual (such as the Methuselah tree)
    * Noteworthy record-holders (such as Jeanne Calment)
    * Exception: Turritopsis nutricula and Hydra, there may be no natural limit to its life span, and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen.

Revived into activity after stasis

    * Various claims have been made about reviving bacterial spores to active metabolism after millions of years. There are claims of spores from amber being revived after 40 million years, and spores from salt deposits in New Mexico being revived after 240 million years. These claims have been made by credible researchers, but are not universally accepted.
    * A seed from the previously extinct Judean date palm was revived and managed to sprout after nearly 2,000 years.

Clonal colonies

    As with all long-lived plant and fungal species, no individual part of a clonal colony is alive (in the sense of active metabolism) for more than a very small fraction of the life of the entire clone. Some clonal colonies may be fully connected via their root systems, while most are not actually interconnected, but are genetically identical clones which populated an area through vegetative reproduction. Ages for clonal colonies, often based on current growth rates, are estimates.

    * A huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea could be up to 100,000 years old.
    * Pando. This clonal colony of Populus tremuloides has been estimated at 80,000 years old, although some claims place it as being as old as one million years.
    * King's Lomatia in Tasmania: The sole surviving clonal colony of this species is estimated to be at least 43,600 years old.
    * A huckleberry bush in Pennsylvania is thought to be as old as 1,300 years of age.
    * Eucalyptus recurva: clones in Australia are claimed to be 13,000 years old.
    * Quercus palmeri: a clonal oak shrub near Riverside in California, isolated for centuries from the rest of its species, is dated at around 13,000 years old.
* Creosote bush: a ring of bushes in the Mojave desert are estimated at 11,700 years old.
* A Huon Pine colony on Mount Read, Tasmania is estimated at 10,000 years old, with individual specimens living to over 3,000 years.
* A colony of Norway Spruce in Sweden, nicknamed Old Tjikko, includes remnants of roots that have been carbon dated to 9,550 years old.
* An individual of the fungus species Armillaria ostoyae in the Malheur National Forest is thought to be between 2,000 and 8,500 years old. It is thought to be the world's largest organism by area, at 2,384 acres (965 hectares).

Individual bacterium

* Two-hundred and fifty million year-old bacteria, Bacillus permians, were revived from stasis after being found in sodium chloride crystals in a cavern in New Mexico. Russell Vreeland, and colleagues from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, reported on October 18, 2000 that they had revived the halobacteria after bathing it with a nutrient solution. Having survived for 250 million years, it is the oldest living thing ever recorded.

Individual plant specimens

* A Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) called Prometheus was measured by ring count at 4,862 years old when it was felled in 1964. This is the greatest verified age for any living organism at the time of its killing.[3] Another Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, known as Methuselah, measured by ring count of sample cores is, at 4,838 years old, the oldest known tree in North America, and the oldest known living individual tree in the world.
* Llangernyw Yew, the oldest individual tree in Europe and second or third oldest individual tree in the world. Believed to be aged between 4,000 years and 5,000 years old this ancient yew (Taxus baccata) is in the churchyard of the village of Llangernyw in North Wales.
* Fortingall Yew, an ancient yew (Taxus baccata) in the churchyard of the village of Fortingall in Perthshire, Scotland; one the oldest known individual trees in Europe. Various estimates have put its age at between 2000 and 5000 years though these days it is believed to be at the lower end of this range.
* Fitzroya cupressoides is the species with the second oldest verified age, a specimen in Chile being measured by ring count as 3,622 years old.
* A Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa) specimen, the Sri Maha Bodhi, is (if its reported planting date of 288 BC is correct) at 2,293 years old, the oldest known flowering plant.
* A specimen of Lagarostrobos franklinii in Tasmania is thought to be about 2000 years old.
* Numerous Olive trees are purported to be 2000 years old or older. An olive tree in Ano Vouves, Crete, claiming such longevity, has been confirmed on the basis of tree ring analysis.
* Jōmon Sugi, the cryptomeria naturally grown in Yakushima Island, Kagoshima, Japan, more than 2,170 to 7,200 years old.
* Great sugi of Kayano, the cryptomeria deemed planted by human in Kaga, Ishikawa, Japan, estimated the age to be 2,300 years in 1928.
* Welwitschia is a monotypic genus of gymnosperm plant, composed solely of the very distinct Welwitschia mirabilis. It is the only genus of the family Welwitschiaceae, in the order Welwitschiales, in the division Gnetophyta. The plant is considered a living fossil. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that there are many individuals which have lived longer than 1000 years, and some are suspected to be older than 2000 years.

Animals

* The Hydrozoan species Turritopsis nutricula is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again. This means that there may be no natural limit to its life span. However, no single specimen has been observed for any extended period, and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen.
* Hydra, it has often been assumed that hydras are one of the few animals that do not undergo senescence (aging), and so are biologically immortal. Evidence for this was provided by Martinez (1998).
* The Antarctic sponge Cinachyra antarctica has an extremely slow growth rate in the low temperatures of the Southern Ocean. One specimen has been estimated to be 1,550 years old.
* A specimen of the Icelandic Cyprine Arctica islandica (also known as an ocean quahog), a mollusk, was found to have lived 405 years and possibly up to 410. Another specimen had a recorded life span of 374 years.
* Some koi fish have reportedly lived more than 200 years, the oldest being Hanako, died at an age of 226 years on July 7, 1977.
* Some confirmed sources estimated Bowhead Whales to have lived at least to 211 years of age, making them the oldest mammals.
* Specimens of the Red Sea Urchin, Strongylocentrotus franciscanus, have been found to be over 200 years old.
* Adwaita, a Aldabra Giant Tortoise died at the (possible) age of 250 in March 2006.
* Tu'i Malila, a Radiated tortoise, died at an age of 188 years in May 1965, the oldest verified vertebrate.
* Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise, died at the age of 175 years in June 2006.
* The deep-sea hydrocarbon seep tubeworm Lamellibrachia luymesi (Annelida, Polychaeta) lives for over 170 years.
* Timothy, a Greek Tortoise, died at an age of 160 years in April 2004.
* Geoduck, a species of saltwater clam native to the Puget Sound, have been known to live over 160 years.
* George the lobster was estimated to be approximately 140 years old in January 2009.
* Jeanne Calment was the oldest human to have verifiable birth records. She was 122 years old at time of death in 1997.
* Tardigrades, capable of cryptobiosis, have been shown to survive nearly 120 years in a dry state.
* The tuatara can live well above 100 years. Henry, a tuatara at the Southland Museum in New Zealand, mated for the first time at the age of 110 years in 2009 with an 80-year-old female and fathered 11 baby tuataras.
* A female Blue-and-yellow Macaw named Charlie was reportedly hatched in 1899, which would make her 111 years old, as of 2010. Her age has not been independently confirmed and the claim may not be reliable. She is claimed to have formerly belonged to Winston Churchill, but Churchill's daughter denies the claim.
* Cookie, a Major Mitchell's Cockatoo resident at Brookfield Zoo, Illinois, USA is the oldest member of his species in captivity, at a verified age of 77, as of 2010.
* An orca of the "Southern Resident Community" identified as J-2 or Granny is estimated to be the oldest orca in the entire community and is 99 years old, as of 2010.

Source: Wikipedia