Oldest Animal Under the Sea: The 4,000-Years Old Deep-Water Coral
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 02.19.08
Image courtesy of Findings
It may not be quite old enough to earn the distinction of being the world's oldest living organism - that "honor" goes to the bristlecone pine tree (aged 5,000 years) - but, at 4,000 years of age, Leiopathes glaberrima, a deep-water coral species, does set the record for being the oldest animal living under the sea.
Located on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, off Hawaii, the 3 meters tall, (extremely) long-lived "black coral" could yield some valuable clues about past incidents of climate change; specifically, it could better scientists' understanding of how oceans draw down carbon dioxide - and of ocean acidification in general. Brendan Roark of Texas A&M University, who led a research expedition in 2006 to study the corals' climate records, presented his findings at the recent AAAS meeting.
How long they can live is anybody's guess, Roark told Science's Erik Stokstad. He and his colleagues used radiocarbon dating to determine the coral's age. What this suggests, he said, is that the harvesting of deep-water coral for jewelry should be outright banned; because the corals grow at such an anemic rate, any level of harvesting would likely wipe out the remaining specimens - those not yet affected by ocean acidification.
Roark believes it could be possible to reconstruct records of subsurface temperature variability and ocean circulation changes, which would provide some insight on climate change incidents and help predict future effects. By comparison, that ocean quahog clam we mentioned a while back - aged 405 years - seems almost sprightly.
Via ::Deep-Sea News: Worlds oldest animal aged to 4000 years (blog)
See also: ::The Oldest Animal in the World: A Clam, ::Resurrecting Life in the "Valleys of the Dead"
Really impressive, mainly because I did not know that the corals got to grow of that size!!!
I didn't know bristlecone pine trees were animals; I thought they were plants.
Um, pine trees aren't animals, they're plants. Coral are animals though. So perhaps they are the oldest animals after all.
The oldest living animal is a tree?
Poor choice of words on my part: should be oldest living organism (not animal). Thank you all who commented on my mistake.
If we're being really particular about this, coral is a colony of organisms known as polyps and not a single organism. But iit's still pretty damned old!
I agree with the outright banning of coral harvestation.
In fact, isn't it time we look around and realize that with the amount of estate jewelry and re-sale out there we never need to make "new" adornment again?
I'll interested in what the studies show about how the Ocean deals with CO2. I trust treehugger will keep me updated! :-)
Makes you feel pretty small and insignificant, dunnit?
So, how did the scientists perform carbon dating on this coral? snip...
Reminds me of the guy that cut down the oldest bristlecone tree to find its age, only to realize his mistake immediately thereafter. (The trees are so twisted from age that core samples cannot cut across the entire set of rings, so he cut it down)
While the bristlecone is only the oldest known tree, there are older organisms on land... like the creosote bush.
I hope they don't have to kill this coral to get the info from it, because that's what they did to the clam...