Capturing the world's oldest living things

From CNN today:

(CNN) -- Rachel Sussman is a time traveler. For the last few years, the American photographer has journeyed across the globe on a mission to bring back images of the world's oldest living organisms.

Check out this link:

edition.cnn.com...=hfkDlQzzOoL

La Lareta: Up to 3000 years old

Welwitschia Mirabilis: 2000 years old

Sagole Baobab: 2000 years old

The list goes on...............

Maybe we can study the biochemistry of these organisms to see if we can learn how to extend our longevity

You better catch Larry then before his show goes off the air and he goes off the map...

He is certainly one the world's oldest living things.

Well unless im mistaken the bacteria one is a little misleading, its almost like HeLa cells (Henrietta Lack's cancer cells) because they practice binary fission which equals fast replication, it just means the same set of genes are being replicated for 50,000 years. Which basically means the parent cell has long since died off but the clones live on...again unless im mistaken, because i just can't see an evolutionary challenged cell singularly living that long. Plants also offer a different challenge to time since they exert little energy compared to us, the only energy they exert is during active transport, 2nd-last stage of photosyntesis and the opening and closing of stomas for osmosis

It's not often a thread comes around where we learn something new, but I've learned things I had no idea about here. Fair enough, ancient trees are well known, but who's ever heard of 100,000 year old sea grass or bacteria going back 500, 000 years? Stunning!

So far, she has shot more than 25 different species of plant or organism, each being older than 2,000 years -- "I wanted to start with the idea of 'year zero' " -- with the oldest being actinobacteria from the permafrost of Siberia estimated to be around 500,000 years old.

Her next trip will take her to the coast of Spain, where she'll dive to see sea grass estimated to be a mind-blowing 100,000 years old.

"That's really one of the most exciting things about this project; you get to encounter these things that are incomprehensible to our sense of time. What does 100,000 years feel like? It's something we can consider for a moment, but hard for us to hold on to it and for it to be meaningful."

From OP's link.

I've taken these images from her website (all images © rachel sussman 1997-2010) linked below...

2000 year old baobab tree


80 000 year old aspens
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bc077bc40313.jpg[/atsimg]

Half a million year old bacteria!
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3fd147d0e5c2.jpg[/atsimg]

Rachel Sussman's photographs & site

Starred and flagged for showing me something new