The title of being the world’s oldest tree is in question as there are two candidates that have qualified as existences of great value for millennia.
One of them, which is still said to be respected, is the tree of Methuselah, whose location is unknown, as it does not want to be revealed to avoid being damaged or attacked. This is a California Aleppo pine that is 4,850 years old, that is, about five millennia.
What is your competitor
But its reputation as the oldest tree on the planet may be in doubt, as a tree likely older than Methuselah has been discovered.
This second tree, a larch – similar to a pine -, found in Los Ríos, Chile, and called the Great Grandfather, may be 5,484 years old, a milestone in history and something that almost any living organism Not available for I live on the planet.
The studies that have begun have not yet given conclusive results, although work continues on the thousand-year-old tree with the greatest accuracy. Among its features, it is 28 meters long and 4 meters in diameter.
How was it discovered
It has been studied and analyzed by Jonathan Barichievich, nephew of the tree’s discoverer, and Antonio Lara of the Universidad Austral de Chile, who tried to date the larch a few months ago.
For this he used the longest drill in the world so as not to damage its structure. They removed a piece of wood and it was possible to verify that the larch has 2,400 rings, although everything indicates that it may be a specimen more than 5,000 years old.
Despite these assumptions, it cannot be claimed that it is true, since it is necessary to carry out a dendrochronology, with which it would be possible to know how many rings it has – each of them corresponds to a year-
But it also hides a downside, and that of a greater species: its conservation. Larch is considered a species at risk of extinction as a result of deforestation and climate change, which continue to affect all types of fauna.
