After a recent study revealed that an ancient alerce tree known as great grandfather might be more than 5,000 years old, a beautiful green forest in southern Chile could be home to the world’s oldest tree.
Due to its huge trunk, scientists were unable to calculate an accurate age using tree rings. Normally, tree rings are counted by extracting a 1 metre (1.09 yard) cylinder of wood, but the great grandfather’s trunk has a diameter of 4 metres.
According to Jonathan Barichivich, the lead scientist of the study, the sample they took and other dating tests show the tree is up to 5,484 years old. ‘This method tells us that 80% of all possible growth trajectories give us an age of this living tree greater than 5,000 years. There is only a 20% chance that the tree is younger’, Barichivich said.
The projected age would be more than half a millennium older than the current record-holder, a 4,853-year-old bristlecone pine tree in California. If one compares it with the trees already dated where we count all the rings, it would make it one of the oldest living trees on the planet’, Barichivich added.
Barichivich is concerned about the tree’s importance in the Alerce Costero National Park, despite the fact that it has withstood multiple centuries of human civilisation. He claimed that as visitors leave the viewing deck, they frequently walk on the tree’s roots and even grab chunks of its bark.
Similar trees in the United States, he noted, are concealed from view to avoid similar harm. Barichivich expressed the hope that people would consider for a fraction of a second about what it means to live 5,000 years, putting their lives and the climate problem into perspective.
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