Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Worlds Oldest Living Tree

Scientists have found a cluster of spruces high in the mountains of western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, must be the world's oldest living trees.
Carbon dating of these Swedish trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making them the world's oldest known living things.
Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said these trees were found during the course of Climate change studies, and have pretty much recorded every single climate change since they were 'born' at the end of the last Ice Age.
These Spruce trees having endured a stunted growth for a few thousand years, are now beginning to grow more rapidly, due to the rising temperatures.

The previous oldest known tree, is the Californian Bristlecone Pine, known as the "Methuselah Tree" that was born at least two thousand years before the birth of Christ.

***Thoughts
These high Swedish mountainous trees, born after the last Ice age, are twice as old, they will certainly have a delicate 'core study' taken, just as the Bristlecone Pine had taken, years ago.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNew...lBrandChannel=0

I'm confused. Carbon dating can't (or shouldn't) be done on living things. They must be dating an older part of the tree that is long since dead.

Its awesome to think of how old and large these trees can get. Back in the summer at my church camp there was a tree called the King David Tree that unfortunately fell over a year or two ago. But before that it was one of the tallest trees in the Sierra Nevadas, and was estimated to be almost 3,000 years old (hence naming it the King David tree since it was about the same age as he was rumored to have lived, only miles apart). But imagine 8,000, and how wise those trees must be to have seen hundreds of generations of humans wither away below its branches.

Tim,

How wise can a non feeling and non thinking tree be, exactly?

good find mike but exactly how did they date the trees the artical dosn't state it or that there is one single tree.

I guess the 'tree' is as wise as the info that is read from its growth rings.
But they are not huge trees in the accepted sense. But rather very stunted SLOW growing bushes, similar to the Californian Bristle cone pine. Due to the extreme cold and mountain height.
Somehow, these bushes survive well above the normal tree line.

They were very very careful before they took a core from the b Bristle cone pine, but it seems in Sweden, there are a number of these 'bushes' and they have almost certainly been cored, or had one cut down, for an age examination?
I suppose the very inner core could be used for Carbon dating? To answer The FallibleFiends earlier question.
Its core would certainly have become dead wood thousands of years ago.
For all their great age, its unlikely these trees would be more than 12 feet tall, gnarled and bent with the wind, with a trunk about four feet around.

http://www.cmdrmark.com/bristlecone.html

wonder if they did the dating on the roots

obviously i was being poetic when i was saying the tree was wise (or at least, trying to be). i was personifiying the tree to all that has gone on in the world in terms of human growth during its existence.

There is wisdom to be gained from trees-- for example they bend with the storm.