15 Oldest Living Things on Earth

Oh fish, throughout your life,

things

like aging, illness, accidents and even global cataclysms can stop the little time you have on this planet and those problems apply to every

living

thing we know, but what

living

things

? They have survived continuously on planet Earth for a long time. Most of the time keep in mind that we are talking about continuously living beings, that is, beings that are alive today and that have never stopped their biological functions and were never revived. number 15 Elephant Island Moss Elephant Island is a 215 square mile speck of land Located just off the Antarctic Peninsula and home to a species of moth that is 5,500 years old, the moss isn't exactly spectacular to look at, but The scientists who first dated it in 1987 were no doubt excited about their discovery.

Elephant Island itself actually has a pretty exciting story of survival too in 1915 Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men ironically lost the ship's strength when it hit the sea ice and sank leaving the men stranded on the ice. The crew sailed on the floating ice and managed to reach Elephant Island. on foot, where they would survive by feeding on penguins and elephant seals, using seal blubber as fire and their fur as additional shelter. Shackleton, knowing there was no chance of rescue, sailed in an open lifeboat with five members of his crew for 800 miles to reach South Georgia, where he met a whaling station.

The whaling station was located after 16 days of sailing in icy waters. Four months later and after four attempts Shackleton finally managed to rescue the rest of his crew, of course none of them knew that they were spending time near some of the

oldest

living things on the planet, but that was probably the last thing on their minds. Number 14 mile Mali eucalyptus also known as eucalyptus file actus Miele Mali is a clonal tree, meaning it can clone itself and grow new trees through its root system. The tree colony has existed for six thousand and six. hundred years, although each tree that grows from the roots only lives for about a hundred years, this may seem like cheating, but you have to think of the tree as a giant underground organism in which each tree acts as a branch of a much larger tree which makes this colony of trees located in southwestern Australia one of the

oldest

living beings on the planet.

If you've seen our video covering the topic of oldest ordinary objects, you'll also know that this tree predates the oldest chair we know of. It predates chairs, yeah, I'm still upset about that number thirteen, box blueberry, box blueberry is a small shrub related to the blueberry that almost went extinct in the last ice age, but managed to hold onto early estimates about the bush, which they placed around 13,000 years old. but later studies place it at around 8,000 years old. This blueberry produces tasteless edible fruits and is found throughout eastern central North America. By the way, this is another plant species that can reproduce clonally through the root system but can also reproduce through pollination.

The few plants left alive today are found within tens of miles of each other, meaning pollination is almost impossible, so yes, once again, one of the oldest living plants is clonal, as the oldest individual is found in Pennsylvania and lives on someone's backyard property where the entire colony was originally located. 100 acres wide and a mile long, but reconstruction of Route 22 and a fire have destroyed much of it. Spruce number 12, the fool of the Norway spruces, ooh, Mountains National Park in Sweden is home to the oldest spruce trees in the world. The oldest spruce here is nicknamed Old Chico after the discoverer's dog and has been carbon dated to be nine thousand nine hundred and fifty years old.

When looking at the tree, you can see what appears to be a single, thin trunk with a bush surrounding it, but you are actually looking at the entire spruce that it was. It wasn't until the 1940s, when temperatures on the mountain began to warm, that old Chico's small trunk began to grow much larger until then, it had simply lived as a bush-sized tree, unlike other trees. Clonal, this spruce and its branches were kept close together and have been growing in the same small area since almost 8000 BC. C., the trunk itself will only live about six hundred years before dying, but the root system will eventually sprout another eleventh Antarctic elephant sponge.

Remember the news headline about scientists accidentally killing the world's oldest animal. A few years ago, well those headlines were completely false, the five hundred and seven year old clam was certainly accidentally killed and was the oldest clam ever found, but it wasn't even close to the oldest living animal on the planet in the cold wasteland of the Antarctica. Under ice and seawater at subzero temperatures lives a creature without a brain or nervous system Ancient elephant sponges were found in Antarctic waters after the Larsen Ice Shelf first disintegrated. They can grow to the size of a minivan and some have estimated that some specimens may be over ten thousand years old, making them the oldest animals on the planet, it should be noted that they have not yet been carbon dated and instead , they are estimated to be 10 millennia old by looking at their slow growth it is seen that basic fact checking, unlike those number 10 clickbait news articles, which in Pine Tasmania is a large island located directly south of Australia, is home of a variety of colorful plants and animals, but I am close to the western coast of Tasmania and huge ancient plant species.

Huon pine known as Leggero strobo sprinklin ii i grows is a slow growing tree that is capable of clonal growth, but unlike other clonal trees, each individual trunk that grows can live up to 2000 years on its own, this specific clonal tree It is male and spans hundreds of acres. and has been dated to ten thousand five hundred years old, however the trees are located on top of a private mining site and are very difficult to access. Fortunately, other trees of the same species are present elsewhere in Tasmania and Australia and are hardy enough to survive quite well without human protection creosote number nine a shrub about the same time humans began agricultural practices this shrub in California It had just started growing from a seed since then this single plant has grown free for 11,700 years and continues to spread outward in a ring formation today, this ancient clonally reproducing creosote, a shrub nicknamed clone king, lives on in the center of the Mojave Desert in the Lucerne Valley, California.

Creosote a is actually incredibly fragile when young and will not reach the age to reproduce clonally unless weather conditions are optimal for a few years. Creosote a has also been used as a medicinal plant by Native Americans for centuries and is associated with the smell of rain for those who live near Mojave Antarctic Beach Number Eight. Once again we look to Australia for another ancient species of tree, this time ending In Queensland, these tall trees have individuals over 6,000 years old, but a group of trees connected to the same root system has been estimated to be 12,000 years old. years.

Antarctic beech grows in high altitudes and cold areas of New South Wales and most trees have not yet been dated, so it is quite possible that even older specimens will be found; You may be confused to learn that these trees get their name because they were native to Antarctica nearly 100 million years ago, at a time when Antarctica was much warmer Antarctic beaches were just beginning to spread as they connected Antarctica. with Australia and South America, although no more trees are found in Antarctica, their progeny can still be found alive and well today, Mojave yucca number seven and once again we return to the Mojave. desert in California to combat another hardy plant that reproduces clonally, the Mahama yucca, it is quite common in the Mojave and is sometimes grown as a garden plant in many places due to its hardiness;

However, 12,000 years ago it is believed to be the oldest ring of clonally reproducing yucca. First sprouted yucca is another plant that has been frequently used by Native Americans as a source of food, medicine, and rope. Fortunately, this small ring of ancient yucca has survived droughts, desert rats, and humans for more than 12,000 years. I also found it interesting to know that the dried yucca stock left after the yucca flowers can be used as a makeshift number six didgeridoo, rare eucalyptus, yes the name sounds stupid I know, but you will be happy to know that the rare eucalyptus It's not actually the name of the plant, it's just a placeholder.

Because we are not allowed to know the real name, there are hundreds of species of eucalyptus, but this one is critically endangered and only five individuals, estimated at 13,000, are known to be located on private mining lands, although the These rare trees are kept secret. Even if it weren't a secret, the trees themselves would be quite difficult to spot, they grow both clonally and through seeds, but apparently the trees are still difficult to germinate, although we can't visit the location in New South Wales, Australia. I guess so. I'm at least glad that steps have been taken to protect this rare number five tree, the Palmer Oak, I'm sorry we keep going back and forth between Australia and California, but apparently the clonal trees really like those two newly discovered areas in 1999 and his age was confirmed in 2009, the thirteenth.

Palmer's thousand-year-old opening named Giraffe Oak is found in the Giraffe Mountains in Riverside County, California. Thirteen thousand years is the minimum age of this small shrub like the oak, and the tree could actually be twice that age. Clonal reproduction kept this small tree alive through a thousand years of the last ice age, wildfires and drought, although there are fears that the most recent drought in California could give the trees a 13,000-year lifespan, too. we must recognize the fungi that grow on the roots of trees and that help them absorb nutrients from an environment in which they have died if they lived alone a long time ago number four LaMacchia Romantica from Tasmania Taz Monica describes only one individual specimen that was left growing in southern Tasmania, making it an incredibly endangered species of plant that has been given the nickname King LaMacchia once again we are looking at a clonally reproduced plant but this is something incredibly special it is a plant sterile that simply refuses to stop reproducing clonally when I say sterile I mean that your ancestor forty-three thousand six hundred years ago produced a seed with a genetic disorder that would normally mean the end of the line for any plant and death for animals, This plant has chromosomes and pairs of three, which makes it triploid, but due to its ability to develop new individuals from the branches that fall from the plant, it continues to reproduce asexually, the age of the plant was only determined thanks to fossilized leaf fragments that were carbon dated, but the plant may be up to 135 thousand years old.

You may be pleased to know that it tends to spread. The plant has been successful, so hopefully the mutant king Lamantia can remain for millennia to come. The number three aspen tree in south central Utah is home to what could be the oldest plant on the planet, depending on how you estimate its age. Pando, which is Latin for "i spread," is a unique male aspen with more than 40,000 trunks sprouting from a 106-acre white root. The system is estimated to be 80,000 years old based on both fossil and geographic information, although some have ruled out estimates of up to 700,000 years old.

Not only is the panda one of the oldest continuously living organisms on the planet, it is also the heaviest, weighing approximately six thousand tons when all of its trunks are taken into account. Pando is not currently protected and has suffered some damage from human presence in the area, but hopefully the panda will receive the protection and recognition it deserves for being a survivor in the future. years number two neptune grass well at least this plant is not found on land neptune grass is native to the mediterranean sea and forms huge underwater meadows that many fish and other marine species call home just south of e-visa a huge colony of Seagrasses were discovered at the bottom of the sea that reachedmore than eight kilometers in length.

The colonies are once again a clonally reproducing plant species estimated to be 100,000 years old, making it the oldest plant species on the planet if the higher emissions from Pando and the King are ignored. LaMacchia, 100,000. Years ago, today's human ancestors had only just begun to explore lands outside of Africa, this colony of Neptune grass existed for that, although it probably didn't see much from the seafloor. I doubt he sees much considering his number one lack of eyes. Siberian Actinobacteria Most of you should already know that the first forms of life on Earth were bacterial, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that the 400,000- to 600,000-year-old actinobacteria found in Siberian permafrost are the oldest. .

Living being that we know in the icy confines of northern Siberia, near the Colima basin, one of the most inhospitable lands in the world can be found. It freezes continuously in the area with meters of permafrost underground. It was in this environment that the ancients A species of Actinobacteria was found now remember as I stipulated at the beginning of the video that we are only covering the oldest beings that live continuously, surely there have been ancient bacteria that have been found in a kind of suspended state that It was then revived but its cellular functions had basically ceased, however, this Actinobacteria has been functioning and repairing damaged DNA even in the subarctic environment and has been doing so at least 200 thousand years before the first Homo sapiens appeared.

These Actinobacteria were discovered by pure luck and a hunch, so just imagine what other living banks will be discovered in the coming years until the next video Hado you