lifetimes

For the span of human lives, see life expectancy.

The longest-lived organisms are trees, if one assumes that two new individuals are “born” when a single-celled organism reproduces by dividing.

Trees

The oldest known living thing is a 4844-year-old bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) identified as WPN-114, growing on Wheeler Peak in Nevada.¹ The previous record holder was another bristlecone pine, 4789 years old, named Methusela.² It grows in the mountains of California, in the Inyo National Forest.

In the mid 1990's news articles appeared saying that a stand of Huon pine (Lagarostrobus franklinii) on Mount Read in Tasmania was more than 10,000 years old. Although Huon pine are long-lived, the articles misread the research, which only concluded that a particular stand of pine was 10,000 years old, not the individual trees within it.³

1. D. R. Currey.
An ancient bristlecone pine stand in eastern Nevada.
Ecology, volume 46, pages 564-566. (1965)

2. E. Schulman.
Bristlecone pine, oldest known living thing.
National Geographic Magazine, volume 113, no. 3, pages 354-372.

3. See www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/BHAN-5494LA?open

Resources

A list of old trees, emphasizing North America, is maintained on the Web by Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, Inc. at www.rmtrr.org/oldlist.htm. Henri D. Grissino-Mayer has a comprehensive dendrochronology site with a good bibliography at web.utk.edu/~grissino/references.htm.