00:00What's the oldest tree on Earth?
00:05The first trees appeared on Earth about 385 million years ago.
00:09Some types of trees live just a few decades, but others can live for hundreds or even thousands
00:15of years.
00:16But what's the oldest tree alive on Earth today?
00:19Until recently, that title belonged to a great basin bristlecone pine in California's White
00:25Mountains.
00:26Bristlecone pines grow very slowly in that cold, elevated landscape.
00:30They're known for their longevity, and this one, nicknamed Methuselah, was estimated to
00:34be 4,845 years old in 2013.
00:40But Methuselah was later displaced by an even older bristlecone pine, also in the White
00:44Mountains, which was found to be 5,062 years old.
00:49That means that it was beginning to grow around the time when humans in Africa were creating
00:53the earliest known examples of rock art.
00:57Another pine tree, a Bosnian pine, in the mountains of Greece, is the oldest officially
01:01dated tree in Europe at 1,075 years old.
01:06Scientists named it Adonis, after the Greek god of desire and beauty, and the tree took
01:10root in 941 A.D., when the Vikings were still raiding settlements along the European coast.
01:18But all those are just the oldest individual trees.
01:23In colonial colonies, groups of trees that share the same genetic material and are connected
01:27by a single root system are far older.
01:31In Utah's Fish Lake National Forest, one group of 40,000 quaking aspen, known as the
01:36pando, or trembling giant, is thought to be 80,000 years old.
01:44Earth's oldest trees, just one of life's little mysteries.
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