• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

One Of Earth’s Longest Living Organisms Is A 14,000-Year-Old Root System

September 21, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

What’s the secret to a long life? You could do worse than to start off by asking the world’s largest organism: Pando, the 106-acre (43-hectare) stand of quaking aspen clones. Estimated to have been spreading its roots for around 14,000 years, it may also be the longest-living organism known to science.

Extreme longevity has been discovered in all manner of creatures, ranging from lifespans that are an impressive deviation from the norm – such as the oldest human who lived for 122 years – to life histories that span thousands of years. The longest-living animals on Earth include the immortal jellyfish that can live for around 2,000 years (if not forever), but when we look at longevity among sessile organisms, things get really crazy.

Advertisement

Pando – up to 14,000 years, but also 130

Pando – pictured above – is a confusing single organism because on the surface it looks like an entire forest. Its name is Latin for spread and it’s actually made up of 47,000 clones that together, weigh around 6,000 tonnes. By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth.

Stands of clonal aspens like this one exist elsewhere on Earth, but none are so sprawling. It took Pando thousands of years to get so big, with some estimates dating it back 14,000 years, despite the fact its individual stems only live to a paltry 130 years.

Monorhaphis chuni – 11,000 years

A deep-sea glass sponge knocked scientists’ socks off in 2012 when they were able to use the composition of its silica structure to establish its lifespan. Named Monorhaphis chuni, it grows spicules made up of concentric layers of silica, and while they can’t be dated like the growth rings in trees, their layers can be matched to past climates to work out when they formed.

There are glass sponges other than M. chuni – which is the oldest – and they all look pretty out-of-this-world.

Advertisement



An M. chuni specimen from the East China Sea was estimated to be around 11,000 years old (+/- 3,000 years). Not only are these 3-meter (10-foot) sponges living through eons, but they’re also recording the journey, and have the potential to teach us a lot about the past conditions of the deep.

The Rose of Hildesheim – 1,200 years

A root system and a deep-sea sponge both seem like the sort of peculiar organism that might forget to die, but an unexpected entry for long-living organisms is a type of rose. Also known as the dog rose or – for obvious reasons – the thousand-year rose, it lives on Germany’s Hildesheim Cathedral and was planted in the early 800s, and no, we didn’t forget the “1”.

The 1000-year-rose plant (green) covering a part of a castle.

The rose survived being bombed in WWII.

Now said to be around 1,200 years old, the rose was almost bombed to death during WWII, but from the rubble of the cathedral it grew back from a surviving root, writes Atlas Obscura. It still blooms annually, producing pink flowers around May.

Advertisement

Ancient root systems, sponges, and flowering roses are pretty cool, but did you know there’s a jellyfish that’s biologically immortal?

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Harvard University to end investment in fossil fuels
  2. North Korea says call to declare end of Korean War is premature
  3. Asian stocks fall to near 1-year low as oil prices stoke inflation worries
  4. “Unique” Medieval Christian Art Discovered By Accident In Sudan Desert

Source Link: One Of Earth's Longest Living Organisms Is A 14,000-Year-Old Root System

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “Something Unknown Is At Work Here”: Unexpected Results From NASA Mission To Deflect Asteroid
  • Dangerous Radiation Awaits Astronauts On Mars – New Mission Could Work Out Just How Much
  • A 4.9 Million-Year-Old Ecosystem Of Interconnected Worlds Is Preserved In A Tennessee Sinkhole
  • 100 Years Since The Scopes (Monkey) Trial: How Much Has Changed Since America’s “Trial Of The Century”?
  • Elephants Use All Kinds Of Gestures To Communicate – They Just Want Apples
  • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Finds Evidence Of “Barrier” In The Sun’s 2 Million Kelvin Atmosphere
  • Watching Videos At Higher Speeds May Save Time But It Has Some Drawbacks
  • In 2008, Ukraine’s Space Agency Sent A Message To Planet Gliese 581c. It Will Arrive In 2029
  • In A First, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery – Just Like A Human Would
  • Newly Discovered “Bone-Digesting” Cells Help Burmese Pythons Consume Every Last Bit Of Their Prey
  • Gold Can Be Made By Scientists In A Lab – There’s Just One Problem
  • Recovery Of 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments From Extinct Animal Opens “New Chapter” Of Biology
  • 6 Leading Medical Organizations Team Up To Sue RFK Jr Over COVID-19 Vaccine Policy
  • Less Ice, More Fire: Evidence Melting Glaciers Make Volcanic Eruptions More Explosive
  • This Mini Fridge-Sized Spacecraft Could Study A Time Of The Universe We’ve Never Seen Before
  • Psilocybin Shows Potential In Slowing Human Cell Aging And Increasing Lifespan In Mice
  • Blue Sharks’ Freaky Tooth-Skin Makes It Possible For Them To Change Color To Green And Even Gold
  • Summer In The Northern Hemisphere Will Be 15 Minutes Shorter Than Last Year’s
  • Your Ability To Be Funny May Not Be Inherited After All, And That’s Really Unexpected
  • New Interstellar Comet Tracked To Its Origin Region: “It’s Much Older Than The Solar System”
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version