The world's oldest tree is currently located in Eastern California called the Methuselah, a 4,853-year-old Great Basin Bristlecone Pine. But researchers found a new contender in South America that might already be 5,000 years old.
(Photo : MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images)
Detail of the "Alerce Milenario" at the Alerce Costero National Park in Valdivia, Chile, taken on April 10, 2023. - In a forest in southern Chile, protected from fires and logging that decimated the species, a giant alerce tree has survived for thousands of years. Scientists see in its trunk a valuable record of how life adapts to the changes on the planet.
New Contender as the World's Oldest Tree
A gigantic tree in a forest in Southern Chile was obtained by a group of researchers that could beat the world's oldest tree in California. According to Interesting Engineering's report, the 'Great Grandfather' is a Fitzroya Cuppressoides or Patagonian Cypress that has a trunk that measures four meters in diameter and 28 meters tall.
These type of trees usually grows in rainforests, depending on catastrophic fire to regenerate stands. They are usually found in the south of South America, hence why the researchers discovered them in Southern Chile. Among the researchers are Austral University Researcher Antonio Lara and Jonathan Barichivich.
Barichvich stated that he interestingly played around the tree during his childhood years as it was discovered by his grandfather in 1972. His grandfather worked as a park ranger in Alerce Costero National Park in Chile, where he and his family continuously protected the tree from tourists by putting protective gear in place to secure their safety of the tree.
Lara noted that it is fascinating that the tree survived for years and there are only a few that have had the opportunity to live this long. Both of the researchers extracted a sample from the Great Grandfather tree in 2020 but failed to reach the middle due to the thickness of the trunk.
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The cores of the tree contain pieces of growth rings, which allows the researchers to determine a tree's age without causing significant damage to the plant. However, Phys.Org reported that these tools were not enough to harvest the growth rings due to the tree's massiveness.
During those years, they calculated the tree through a predictive model and estimated their sample was 2,400 years old, accounting tree's growth between about 446 B.C. and 2018. But Barichivich now believes that 80% of its trajectories show that it would be 5,000 years old.
Claiming the Title
ABC News reported that the Guinness World of Record was contacted regarding this matter. Managing Director Adam Millward said that the Patagonian Cypress is known as the second oldest species. While there is no denying its potential to hold the record of the Oldest Tree in the World, the evidence of the researchers is not that strong enough.
Millward added, "It's our view that it would be premature to recognize these estimates for Alerce Milenario at this time. If that were to change in the future, or if new evidence were to come to light, GWR can certainly reassess its claim for the title."
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