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On every continent on the planet, you can find ancient lifeforms that have been living for thousands, or even millions of years, their lifespans varying wildly depending on the type of organism.<\/p>\n
Many of these are trees. Earth is dotted with ancient trees representing the oldest individual examples\u00a0of their species, the most elderly of which\u00a0have been around for between\u00a02,000 and 5,000 years, providing\u00a0food and shade for some of the earliest\u00a0human civilizations.<\/p>\n
But the\u00a0real longevity champions of the plant world are clonal colonies. These vegetation systems repopulate by self-replication so no part of the system is ever as old as the whole, but are all\u00a0genetically identical and thus considered a single organism, often sharing a single root system. Such colonies can live to remarkably old ages.<\/p>\n
Similarly, networked organisms like fungi live significantly longer than individual plants\u00a0or animals. These impressive mushrooms are not only among the\u00a0most ancient but are also the largest organisms in the world, eating their way across thousands of acres of forest.<\/p>\n
As for the animal kingdom, the lifespans of terrestrial animals\u2014the oldest of which tend to be tortoises, topping out around 200 years old\u2014pale in comparison to sea creatures living deep in the ocean. Aquatic organisms like sponges and coral may lack classic body parts like a head, heart, neurons, muscles, or major organs, but are considered animals because unlike plants they don\u2019t make their food but rather feed off other microorganisms.<\/p>\n
Deep-sea living does wonders for longevity. So does being frozen for extended periods. While it\u2019s difficult to measure the exact age of these primitive lifeforms, some organisms have been found\u00a0to contain\u00a0DNA from many millions of years ago.<\/p>\n
These ancient creatures are a rare and fascinating peek at the history of life itself. From Greece\u2019s ancient olive tree to Antarctica\u2019s volcano sponge, here are 15 of the oldest living things in the world.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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[ad_1] On every continent on the planet, you can find ancient lifeforms that have been living for thousands, or even millions of years, their lifespans varying wildly depending on the type of organism. Many of these are trees. Earth is dotted with ancient trees representing the oldest individual examples\u00a0of their species, the most elderly of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-lifestyle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21749,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747\/revisions\/21749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}