Earth’s oldest fogies revealed
Nowadays most people can expect to live well into their 80s and even 90s – some will even reach the ripe old age of 100. Some species, though, have very short lifespans; for example, the mayfly only lives for a day or two. However, many plants and animals on our planet can live for far longer than us.
Some of the world’s oldest living organisms are trees. One tree in California’s White Mountains, a bristlecone pine, is thought to be a whopping 5,067 years old.
To calculate the age of a tree, experts first study maps from different years, to discover when it began growing there. Another well known way of working out a tree’s age is to count the number of rings it has in its trunk (one for each year). This method is called dendrochronology. However, since that technique involves cutting trees down, experts prefer to use a tool that takes a small sample out of the trunk so that the rings can be counted without doing too much damage.
Other species that outlive humans include bowhead whales and Galápagos tortoise. Hunters in Alaska, US, once discovered old harpoon points (tools used in fishing and whaling) inside the body of a bowhead whale. The age of the tools suggested that the whale was around 211 years old. The Galápagos tortoise, which lives on a group of Pacific islands, reaches at least 100 years old on average. The oldest on record lived to be 152.