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What is the oldest living organism on the planet?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fs111 9y agoa book about this very topic: http://www.rachelsussman.com/oltw/ http://www.rachelsussman.com/oltw/
- Shalomboy 9y agoGymnosperms – the marathon runners of the botanical world. Tré dope, mon dude.
- reasonattlm 9y agoThe AnAge database may be of interest to those who like to think about this sort of thing. http://genomics.senescence.info/species/query.php?search=Animalia&show=1&sort=4&page=1 http://genomics.senescence.info/species/query.php?search=Ani... http://genomics.senescence.info/species/nonaging.php http://genomics.senescence.info/species/nonaging.php Note the sponges, particularly this one: http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Scolymastra_joubini http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Sc... "Animals of this and similar species of Antarctic sponges grow extremely slowly in the low temperatures. Estimates based on growth rates suggest a very long lifespan in this and similar animals. One two meter high specimen in the Ross Sea was estimated to be 23,000 years old, though because of sea level fluctuations in the Ross Sea it is unlikely that such an animal could have lived for more than 15,000 years. Even if 15,000 years is an overestimate, which may well be the case, this specimen appears to be the longest-lived animal on earth."
- hplust 9y agois it just me or is this article written like someone who did a few google searches for old organisms and then writes down their speculations in the form of what some would call an article? tl;dr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) "However, the oldest, precisely measured organism living on Earth today remains, for now, a Great Basin Bristlecone pine tree. Pando the quaking aspen and Antarctic glass sponges could be much older but their ages are assumed from indirect measurements and educated guesswork. "
- to3m 9y agoAs always, if your curiousity is piqued by one of these articles, you really might as well do exactly what the journalist did and go to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis... (My favourite thing from the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomatia_tasmanica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomatia_tasmanica)
- ComodoHacker 9y agoTo me, it's just an indicator of what an amazing time we live in, when almost any kind of information is just a few Google searches away (no sarcasm). Also, I probably would never make these searches myself if this article wasn't written and appeared here. That said, I admit Antarctic glass sponges deserve mention in the article.
- 4ndr3vv 9y agoRadiolab had a show on this story back in the day: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91722-be-careful-what-you-plan-for/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91722-be-careful-what-you-plan...
- coldpie 9y agoThe Skeptic's Guide to the Universe also discussed the 80,000 year old clonal tree in a recent episode (I think the latest?). http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu
- scott_s 9y agoAnother Skeptic's Guide listener on HN! I've posted various comments linking to SGU segments or Steven Novella posts, but I have yet to see anyone else do so.
- hossbeast 9y agoYou're not alone
- coldpie 9y agoI heard about it here, actually, in some podcast thread a year or two ago. It rapidly became my favorite podcast. 90 minutes every week!
- scott_s 9y agoI actually stumbled on it 4 years ago while having a discussion on HN. I was looking for explanations on the biological approach to mental illness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829068
- coldpie 9y agoHeh heh, how on Earth did you dig that comment up?
- Diederich 9y agoThe main Bristlecone Pine grove in California is a lovely place. It sits near 10,000 feet, and yet is pretty easy to drive to. It's about five or six hours east of the SF bay area, depending on whether Tioga pass is open or not. (This year, the pass will be opening quite late.) I strongly encourage a visit if at all possible. It is truly like another world up there, and the silence is magnificent.
- njarboe 9y agoI would second visiting. It is a great experience and quite unlike visiting other ancient forests. Unlike say a giant sequoia grove or a virgin rain forest, the trees size are more at the human scale. They look very old and it hits your psyche below the conscious level. Some trees having only a small strip of living bark attached to a few branches and needles with the rest of the dead trunk exposed. The wood is very hard and over thousands of years is eroded by the wind/sand-dust like a rock formation in a desert. The high elevation puts your mind slightly off balance if you come directly from the Owen valley at 3000 ft. These trees like to grow on limestone and there is almost no other plants around and no dirt. On a clear day (and most are) you experience just a jumble of bare white rock with an amazingly deep blue sky, a cool breeze, and these ancient trees clinging to life. The photo in the article is not from the preserved groves in the White Mountains near Bishop. There it is more high rolling hills than dramatic mountain views. I prefer that setting as one is not distracted from the trees.
- TACIXAT 9y agoWhile I was there I asked how the trees got so old (3000 - 5000 years), if it was a special kind of tree or what. The ranger told us that trees don't die of age, if they have roots, bark, and leaves, they can keep on going. It was the environment of that area that allowed the trees to grow live so long. It's relatively high elevation, so there are few bugs and other predators. The biggest threat they faced was from erosion, and wind taking the bark off over time. Absolutely awesome place.
- bcbrown 9y ago> The biggest threat they faced was from erosion I've always thought that was incredibly cool. These trees live so long that a primary cause of death is the mountain literally eroding away from beneath them.
- babesh 9y agoHow cavalier we are about taking life of other species.
- criley2 9y agoWe're arguably the least cavalier about taking life of any life on earth. In the wild, life is so cheap and valueless that when we witness unspeakable acts of horrific wild violence, we have to condition it: wild is wild, nature is nature, human expectations and morality don't apply.
- abhishivsaxena 9y agoReally? What did you have for lunch today? All the herbivores in Animal Kingdom would disagree with that statement.
- monkmartinez 9y agoNo really. Go to /r/natureismetal and witness it for yourself. Here is a goat eating baby chickens...http://imgur.com/kHJhMjW http://imgur.com/kHJhMjW
- mikeash 9y agoPlants still count as life.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoa programmer above the age of 37?
- excalibur 9y agoI've been under the impression for many years that the oldest living organism on the planet was the giant underground fungus in Oregon. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-... It seems to have the title of "largest" locked down, but it's a viable contender for "oldest" as well. It's at least worth a mention anyway.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 9y agoI think clonal colonies like Pando are some of the the oldest LARGE organisms. But can one say they are organisms? Probably a few rotifers and tardigrades are the oldest organisms since they can lie dormant for many years and then be reanimated with water. Perhaps millions of years!!!
- theptip 9y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis..., > "Humongous Fungus", an individual of the fungal species Armillaria solidipes in the Malheur National Forest, is thought to be between 2,000 and 8,500 years old.[33][34] It is thought to be the world's largest organism by area, at 2,384 acres (965 hectares). So it may be the oldest organism, but it also has the crown for largest.
- codazoda 9y agoThere was a tree. Someone was trying to check it's age and his bit got stuck. He cut the tree down to retrieve his bit, finding the tree to be the oldest living (something). I don't have a link. Probably on Atlas Obscura.
- codazoda 9y agoThere was a tree. Someone was trying to check it's age and his bit got stuck. He cut the tree down to retrieve his bit, finding the tree to be the oldest living (something). I don't have a link. Probably on Atlas Obscura.
- otempomores 9y agoMy vote would go to the cloning bacteria.
- tscs37 9y agoThere is an interesting video from It's Okay to be Smart on this topic; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgspUYDwnzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgspUYDwnzQ It seems they point to a group of bacteria living under Siberian Permafrost for the past half million years. As the video also points out; not in suspended animation, they're rather alive and repairing themselves.
- Razengan 9y agoThe oldest living organism may well be the planet itself, though it may require a review of the term "living organism" :)
- Razengan 9y agoA related question which has always intrigued me: Can long-living organisms, or hard-coded behavior across generations of short-lived organisms, be used to transfer data or preserve knowledge across incredible stretches of time? For example, the rings within trees that live for thousands of years. Or, the elaborate art made by creatures like the Japanese Puffer Fish. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1PID91sEW8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1PID91sEW8
- VLM 9y agoDNA is probably your best bet for bottom up approach. Its surprisingly difficult data to find and the rate probably varies a lot, but wikipedia claims: "The human germline mutation rate is approximately 0.5×10−9 per basepair per year" My RAID array does better, polaroid pictures somewhat worse, etc. A bit error rate of 1e-9/yr is something that can be worked around over a lifespan but probably not over a million years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate
- dmurray 9y agoWhy not over a million years? That would still only be 0.1% of bits flipped, and it should be possible to design a code with enough redundancy or error correction to take care of that. Is there some compounding effect I'm not thinking of? Or simply that it's hard to keep a species alive for a million years?
- VLM 9y agoOuch I did some research and found "Mammals, for instance, have an average species "lifespan" from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years." Evolution: Library: The Current Mass Extinction - PBS www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04.html So yeah, it would be a shame if space aliens visited and encoded a message to us in saber toothed tigers or trilobites. Also I have no religious hangups, I'm a direct descendant of the ancestor of amoebas or whatever exactly, and if the message were encoded into whatever makes an amoeba an amoeba, well, its definitely gone now. I think it would be hard to "infect" a species with stored data. They'd have to burn more protein to replicate that extra DNA material, which would provide a competitive advantage to any individual not carrying the data, so its not going to last long. Even thinking outside the box with a virus, wouldn't smaller ones have better odds of survival?
- mtdewcmu 9y agoIt seems that one could argue that the first single-celled organism has never died. Single-celled organisms reproduce by dividing, and there's no distinction between parent and offspring, right? So if any offspring survives, then the original organism arguably has not died.
- qbrass 9y agoAnd when it becomes a multi-celled organism through various mutations? If you could trace your lineage back to the first single-celled organism, would that make you the oldest lifeform on the planet?
- Karellen 9y agoThere's a good argument to be made that organisms which reproduce with haploid gametes (animals and plants) truly generate "new" individuals when the sperm and egg fuse to create the first cell with a nucleus containing a truly unique genotype. However, organisms that reproduce by fission, where one complete living cell divides into two identical complete living cells (minor single-site mutations aside) have a much stronger case to claim that they are both still "the same" organism, as old as the original. So, no, you aren't the oldest organism on the planet, but many bacteria could be considered to be a billion or two years old.
- sophacles 9y agoIt always amuses me how rapidly discussions about life (define life, what constitutes a different species or organism) end up at ancient philosophical discussions. In this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus is just a breath away! (In this case: would those cells be a billion or two years old? Have all of their atoms been replaced at this point? Does it matter?)
- qbrass 9y agoIf the clones of individuals can accrue minor errors until they've diverged enough to become a breeding pair and still be considered the same organism. Why would the result of them melding their DNA together make them a new organism?
- lenkite 9y agoWhy be merely old when you can be immortal ? http://immortal-jellyfish.com/immortal-jelly-fish-life-cycle/ http://immortal-jellyfish.com/immortal-jelly-fish-life-cycle...
- theprop 9y agoYes, I believe the oldest trees on Earth are around 5000 years old. Some Fungi systems could be extremely old...but they sort of clone each other so it's not exactly the same organism living...but that said most of your cells except neurons seem to die and get replaced, so continuous living is open to some interpretation. You could say the creator of the Venus Willendorf is the oldest "living in our memory" human being...the sculpture is thought to be 35,000 years old and continues to influence artists today like Jeff Koons. http://arthistoryresources.net/willendorf/willendorfdiscovery.html http://arthistoryresources.net/willendorf/willendorfdiscover...
- simen 9y agoSomewhat related: last year a study showed that the oldest living vertebrates are Greenland sharks, which can attain ages of 400-500 years: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143218.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143218.h... Saw a documentary that mentioned this recently. Interestingly, these sharks are born with great eyesight, but nearly all of them that have been studied have these parasites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommatokoita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommatokoita) embedded in their eyes that literally eat their corneas.
- samirillian 9y agoAn American geographer killed the oldest confirmed bristlecone, Prometheus, which was even older than Methuselah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree)
- gedy 9y agoI thought the oldest may be this 13000yo bush near Riverside California? http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/22/science/la-sci-oak23-2009dec23 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/22/science/la-sci-oak23...
- sunstone 9y agoDoes 'reviveable' qualify as living? Some small organisms have been revived after over 100k years if I remember correctly.
- yitchelle 9y agoAlthough I haven't seen any post lately, I have been following this blog that describes some very old organisms around the world. There is a description of Lomatia Tasmanica which is claimed to be 43000 years old. Obviously, growing clonally. http://oltw.blogspot.de/ http://oltw.blogspot.de/
- atka 9y agoThe transmittable dog cancer? It started about 11000 years ago. The cancer is an STD and the cells are all the same from the original dog.