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World's oldest tree discovered living in Sweden
The world’s oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden.
The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.
For many years the spruce tree has been regarded as a relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region.
”Our results have shown the complete opposite, that the spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range,” says Leif Kullman, Professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University.
A fascinating discovery was made under the crown of a spruce in Fulu Mountain in Dalarna. Scientists found four “generations” of spruce remains in the form of cones and wood produced from the highest grounds.
The discovery showed trees of 375, 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years old and everything displayed clear signs that they have the same genetic makeup as the trees above them. Since spruce trees can multiply with root penetrating braches, they can produce exact copies, or clones.
The tree now growing above the finding place and the wood pieces dating 9,550 years have the same genetic material. The actual has been tested by carbon-14 dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, USA.
Previously, pine trees in North America have been cited as the oldest at 4,000 to 5,000 years old.
In the Swedish mountains, from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, scientists have found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old.
Although summers have been colder over the past 10,000 years, these trees have survived harsh weather conditions due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died.
”The average increase in temperature during the summers over the past hundred years has risen one degree in the mountain areas,” explains Leif Kullman.
Therefore, we can now see that these spruces have begun to straighten themselves out. There is also evidence that spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change.
The ability of spruces to survive harsh conditions also presents other questions for researchers.
Have the spruces actually migrated here during the Ice Age as seeds from the east 1,000 kilometres over the inland ice that that then covered Scandinavia? Do they really originate from the east, as taught in schools? “My research indicates that spruces have spent winters in places west or southwest of Norway where the climate was not as harsh in order to later quickly spread northerly along the ice-free coastal strip,” says Leif Kullman.
“In some way they have also successfully found their way to the Swedish mountains.”
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What a crock
A pop media out let provides a story, then people jump in with black-white arguments to support their overall prejudices, then backtrack to grey-grey logic when contradicted. If tree rings were the only way to date-line events then this info about multiplicity rings by certain types of trees is a great way to cloud a simpletons idea of time. I mean that's pretty cool how the tree in the above posters link can provide itself with multiple tree rings during drought to conserve water. However, tree rings are only one of very many overlapping ways to determine age. Some aging methods lend themselves better to certain assumptions, others lend themselves to other. But the overall picture of how long life has been around or has adapted is not at question. There is a vast array of evidence to support life being older than the bible says. For crying out loud, what's special about science is that anyone can use someone else's tests or study to reproduce the results, or not. It's the process that needs taught and understood. Individual findings are ok, but individual findings can be freaks, outliers. However, if very many people conduct the same experiments and they produce startlingly similar conclusions then over time a consensus is built up to support the original testers theory. If the same experiment is conducted over many many years then eventually the theory is taken as general (laymans) fact. Is the tree 9,550 years old? Wrong question, and too simple. Better, does a Spruce produce discontinuous off shoots that have continued the same genetic (tree) sequence for 9,550 years and if so how? That's a better question. And that would be cool to know. Design a test, test it, then post the answer and how you did the test to let others try it. Do your own work. The straw-man of a Shrine rebuilt over time is a bogus, misleading non-sequitur. The two questions aren't the same. It's like: if I replace all your parts over time (assuming it could be done) then would you be the same or different? To you, you'd be the same, to us you'd be a collection of other parts. But you can't test it, can't reproduce the test, or can catalog the results, no one else could either. So it only a staw-man argument, subject to anyones whims of fantasy.
Religious people, go back to school to learn what the scientific process is, just keep religion and science separate cause they relate to different things. You can't test religion, you either belive it or not.
quack, I'm a duck...
Evangelical Creationists and 9550 Years of Evolution
I'm wondering what evangelical creationists are going to make of this tree, especially now that we have one running for vice president of the United States.
really 9000?
and did they measured the rings or used the inaccurate carbon dating?
Tools of the trades
They take core samples that will probably end up killing the tree for an exact date. Otherwise they probably just do some fancy carbon dating. I heard a polish research group uses a chainsaw. ;)
WITH WHAT INSTRUMENT DID THE SCIENTISTS MEASURED THE TREE'S AGE
IT'S AMAZING TO DISCOVERED THIS- THE WOLRD'S OLDEST TREE. BUT MY QUESTION IS HOW AND WITH WHJAT INSTRUMENT DID THE SCIENTIST DISCOVEREED THE TREE'S AGE?
Are these trees really that old?
"Previously, pine trees in North America have been cited as the oldest at 4,000 to 5,000 years old."
Maybe they are 4,000 to 5,000 years old, and maybe they're not ... http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdf
picture
very nice but why there is no picture of this tree?
Oldest Tree?
Our bodies recycle most of the cells over a period of a week; some faster, some slower. Can we really assign an age to ourselves, in that case? The question is whether the tree completely dies, and then the 'clone' arises, or if only part of the tree (the trunk) dies, and it replaces that with a new one. If we replace a fingernail, are we no longer as old as we claim? If a tree replaces the trunk, does that mean it is a new tree, now? That's the part we see, yes, but that's not the only part of the tree, after all.
Oldest tree - oldest building
There is a very old shrine in Japan, built of wood. Probably constructed in the 13th century but over time, every single piece of the building was replaced. Now can we say that this is still the oldest building? It has new elements. Along the same ways, can we say these are old trees, since they are just the clones of an even older tree? When we clone ourselves, we won't add the original age to the clone age, do we?
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