It began life during the last ice age, long before man turned to agriculture and built the first cities in the fertile crescent of the Middle East. It was already thousands of years old when the Egyptians built their pyramids and the ancient Britons erected Stonehenge.
The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today.
Independent (thanks, Tammy)
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I’d love to hug that old tree!!!
How long until it gets chopped down?
That kinda puts a spanner in the theories of creationists doesn’t it?!
I wonder what the hard-core creationists will say about this Genesis-contradicting tree. :-/
but what about pando?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
seems like only whacko things come out of my home state, give a little love to pando. Good hiking in that area and no missionaries to be found anywhere.
Wow that is a great story. Unbelievable 13.000 years what this tree withstood.
wowzer if only it could speak!
woahh!! old!!! i have the urge to turn into a tree hugger haha
x
Absolutely wonderful! I simply cannot get my head around something being that ancient.
You just wish it could talk to us, don’t you? Imagine the things it has seen & could tell us.
LC x
Respect the elderly…
Hug a tree
This is absolutely unbelievable; 13 thousand years! 13 THOUSAND YEARS!
@Fink: “That kinda puts a spanner in the theories of creationists doesn’t it?!”
Not at all. The tree isn’t millions of years old and the article says “If the age estimate it correct,..blah, blah…”
Maybe it’s not correct. Who says the climate in that part of California has always been the same. i.e. “successive periods of drought, frost, storms and high winds”?
Next hippy tourist attraction I assume. How unfortunate. I’m sending big environment friengly hugs through the air waves too.
I can name at least 3 older plants.
The Kings Lomatia in Tasmania is around 43,000 years old.
Pando the Quaking Aspen as mentioned about is about 80,000 (and possibly much more) years old.
And a colony of Posidonia oceanica in the mediteranian is thought to be about 100,000 years old.
Then of course there is the Jellyfish that is essentially immortal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula
Pah! It could tell us some things, but we could tell it how the universe got started, and when, and what is to become of it.
And yes, lets see how the creationists rationalise this, should be good for a laugh.
To Stewart Cowan…. don’t creationists think the world is somewhere between 5000 to 10000 years old. Not millions. As for climate change, this would be taken into account in all forms of dating, so yes this blows creation theories out of the water. As do the even older plants mentioned.