It’s honestly hard for our brains to understand how very old the world – and some of the beings still living it – actually are.
Sure, we hear the numbers and we can recite the different periods and eras, but that’s not the same as really grasping it, right?
Well, this organism in the Mojave Desert could help – at least, it could if it could talk.
It’s a creosote bush ring called “King Clone,” and is a colony of genetically identical plants that all originate from one ancestor.
Image Credit: Public Domain
The bush has been growing for around 11,700 years, or about as long as human agriculture has existed.
Researchers have estimated the age of the bush a couple of different ways. First, they measured how long it takes for the buses to grow outwards in a ring. Second, they used radiocarbon dating on the center of the ring itself.
Both methods led to the same conclusion.
Frank Vasek, the University of California Riverside Professor who dated the creosote ring, believes the bush was one of the first life forms to exist in the Mojave after the last ice age.
The current ring is 72 x 26 feet, and all of the bushes are exact clones of the one at the center.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
The actual oldest organism on Earth (that we know about) is called Pando. It’s a 14,000-year-old colony of 47,000 quaking aspen clones in Utah.
If trees could talk!
If you think that’s impressive, check out this story about a “goldmine” of lithium that was found in the U.S. that could completely change the EV battery game.