What is the oldest living things?

Answer 1

This depends on your definition of criteria.

• The bristle cone pine of California is estimated to be near 4000 years old.
• A Creosote bush in the Mohave Desert is estimated to be near 10,000 years old, however there is no 'original wood' to this plant, the outer-ring of the plant circle is the clone of where an inner ancestor use to be.
• Red wood trees when they fall still continue to grow, sending up shoot from their fallen trunks and branches to become new trees. Again this is a situation of cloning and the original wood is no longer present.
• Certain subterranean fungi of the Olympic peninsula maintain a gigantic net-corpus and again asexually clone themselves to an incalculable age.

the oldest living thing is a tree

Brestlecone Pine Tree

And sea turtles.
There are many species that are technically immortal.

The Hydrozoan species Turritopsis dohrnii is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again. This means that there may be no natural limit to its life span.[3] However, no single specimen has been observed for any extended period, and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen.

A huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to be between 12,000 and 200,000 years old. The maximum age is theoretical, as the region it occupies was above water at some point between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago.

The bristlecone pine trees in California could be up to 5000 years old. Yew trees in Scotland, Andean pines, and European olive trees also have long life spans.

Some tree species such as aspens branch off as clones from a central plant, so colonies can be very large and very old. A Lomatia species known as Tasmanian Kings Holly has a lifespan of about 300 years, but a known clone has been dated from fossil leaves to be 43,600 years old, and possibly as old as 135,000 years.

The living things which have existed as species for the longest include cyanobacteria, which have been on Earth for up to 3.5 billion years. Modern species of bacteria have existed in their current forms for several million years.

(see related questions and link)

Answer 2

This depends on your definition of criteria.

• The bristle cone pine of California is estimated to be near 4000 years old.
• A Creosote bush in the Mohave Desert is estimated to be near 10,000 years old, however there is no 'original wood' to this plant, the outer-ring of the plant circle is the clone of where an inner ancestor use to be.
• Red wood trees when they fall still continue to grow, sending up shoot from their fallen trunks and branches to become new trees. Again this is a situation of cloning and the original wood is no longer present.
• Certain subterranean fungi of the Olympic peninsula maintain a gigantic net-corpus and again asexually clone themselves to an incalculable age.

the oldest living thing is a tree

Brestlecone Pine Tree

And sea turtles.
There are many species that are technically immortal.

The Hydrozoan species Turritopsis dohrnii is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again. This means that there may be no natural limit to its life span.[3] However, no single specimen has been observed for any extended period, and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen.

A huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to be between 12,000 and 200,000 years old. The maximum age is theoretical, as the region it occupies was above water at some point between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago.

The bristlecone pine trees in California could be up to 5000 years old. Yew trees in Scotland, Andean pines, and European olive trees also have long life spans.

Some tree species such as aspens branch off as clones from a central plant, so colonies can be very large and very old. A Lomatia species known as Tasmanian Kings Holly has a lifespan of about 300 years, but a known clone has been dated from fossil leaves to be 43,600 years old, and possibly as old as 135,000 years.

The living things which have existed as species for the longest include cyanobacteria, which have been on Earth for up to 3.5 billion years. Modern species of bacteria have existed in their current forms for several million years.

(see related questions and link)

Answer 3

The oak