Philippine Blog Awards 2010Oldest Living Thing – Neptune Grass Trumps Tasmanian Plant
February 8, 2012 by admin
Filed under Talk of the Town
The oldest living thing in our planet is no longer the 43,000 year-old Tasmanian plant. The oldest living thing, scientists say, are in the family of seaweeds and seagrass.
Australian scientists have discovered that the oldest living thing or oldest living organism in the planet is the giant patches of seagrass found in the Mediterranean sea which is believed to be 200,000-year-old.
In a report by the Huffington Post, scientists was able to determine the age of the oldest living thing by a process called “DNA sequencing,” or ascertaining 40 different sites over a 2,000 mile range from Cyprus to Spain.
Scientifically named Posidonia oceanica or commonly known as Mediterranean tapeweed or Neptune Grass, the patches of seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old beating the current holder of the title “oldest living thing,” which is the Tasmanian plant.
Posidonia oceanica is a seagrass species that is endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. It forms large underwater meadows that are an important part of the ecosystem. The fruit is free floating and known in Italy as ‘the olive of the sea’. Balls of fibrous material from its foliage, known as egagropili, wash up to nearby shorelines. It may be one of the largest and oldest clonal colonies on Earth
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