How Old Is the World's Oldest Tree?
by Bonnie Alter, London on 04.23.08
Here it is, in all its lonely glory: the world's oldest living tree. Found in western Sweden, scientists believe that this spruce is 9,550 years old. Before, pine trees in North America had been called the oldest at 4,000 to 5,000 years old. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a bristlecone pine named Methuselah in California's White Mountains was aged 4,768. But this discovery changes that view dramatically.
Just to be clear about this: the tree itself is new. But scientists found a cluster of about 20 trees that are 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years old. They used carbon dating on the cones and wood, found underneath its crown, and that showed that its root system had been growing for 9,550 years. Spruce trees grow by cloning so they produce exact copies. It was explained that "while any individual tree growing in the area would itself not be more than a few hundred years old, any tree found on site over the centuries would be generated from the same genetic root system. There is constant turnover in what is actually growing above ground but genetically, the trees growing today are the same as those from thousands of years ago.” A fence is being erected around the tree to protect it from trophy hunters. :: BBC News
that's incredible. I'm trying to imagine 9000+ years ago....
Aspen trees grow through clones, and there have been reports that Aspen is not only the largest organism on the planet (stretching many thousand ha) could also be the older then this spruce using this methodology. One aspen clone is believed to survive the last ice age, making it much older then this spruce or anything else for that matter.
Look at that spruce, and look at an apsen tree and then look at a bristlecone pine, the choice is clear which is the nicest one to look at.
Get your facts straight. Scientists believe that the oldest tree is roughly 8000 years old. Other than that, the article was interesting.
If you were to hug Methuselah you would be embracing the trunk of a single tree with a 4,768 year-old core.
If you were to hug Methuselah you would be embracing the trunk of a single tree with a 4,768 year-old core.
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that's incredible. I'm trying to imagine 9000+ years ago....
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That's easy, Hollywood made a movie that accurately depicts the earth even before this tree .... 10,000 BC!
The above comments have addressed the problems of this post nicely, but I would like to reiterate. If one is to accept underground structures as part of the tree, there should be little doubt that many aspen groves are thousands of years older than this "tree."
Secondly, it is highly misleading to state that "Spruce trees grow by cloning" because it implies that the many species of spruce all reproduce primarily asexually. Spruces reproduce primarily (or at least frequently) sexually: pollen is distributed, sperm fuses with egg, seeds grow and are distributed...
I know it seems mean to nitpick, I just wish the authors of these posts would do a teensy bit of research before posting things like this that often spread misinformaiton. I mean, the site is called TREEhugger!
This makes me laugh.
From Larry, "If you were to hug Methuselah you would be embracing the trunk of a single tree with a 4,768 year-old core."
Since I'm the only TreeHugger in my small town, I'm constantly asked, 'What's the oldest tree?", with a dumbfounded look that I don't know. . Now, I can get it straight!
Sorry to dampen the Darwinian zeal, but Noah's Flood was a mere 4000 years ago. No plants are older than that as all was ground to a pulp and only seeds remained.
The geological record clearly shows the entire world was under water and the rock strata formed by settling out of water. Each layer is heavier than the next. Was the earth fatter back then? Ask Darwinists why they don't tell you about the RELATIVE WEIGHT of each of those stratas. It's cuz they lie like carpet fiber.
As for Carbon-14, it is worthless without knowing the initial amount of Carbon-14 that up inside old T-Rex (or in this case, Tree-Rex). Unless these dudes have a time machine in their garage, they are just guessing how much C-14 was there.
If a candle burns at 1 in/hr and it's an inch tall, it'll last for one hour. But how long has it BEEN burning? That depends on how tall it USED to be. You get that, right? It's the same for Carbon-14.
But you knew they were misleading you (lying) when they pretending this particular tree was that old, rather than the XYZ near it. But I'm telling you even the XYZ is younger than that. And I just showed they cannot accurately guess how old.
Give it up, evolutionists. You've been outed.
And I suppose that Mr. Skeptic wouldn't believe that China exists because he's never personally been there . . .
'Fence to protect it from trophy hunters'
So sad that great swathes of humanity haven't developed any higher intelligence over the same 9,000 years...
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls....
carbon dating isn't really based on "the amount of carbon-14", it's based on the ration of carbon-14 (which decays) and carbon-12 (which doesn't). the reason carbon-14 dating works is because we know how much of everyday carbon is the carbon-14 isotope, and how much is carbon-12 (and other carbon isotopes). That ratio is pretty constant - it stays the same during carbon uptake. Once the organism dies, carbon uptake stops, and decaying carbon-14 doesn't get replaced with "new" carbon. So to figure out how old something is, you look at the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in your sample. Since we know how fast carbon-14 decays, you can do some fairly simple math to figure out how long ago this specimen stopped taking up carbon.
So while the analogy with the 1 inch candle sounds nice, it doesn't actually apply here.