Scientists say that a giant swathe of Mediterranean seagrass may be the oldest living organisms on Earth.
Clones of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica are thought to be up to 200,000-years-old. This beats the Tasmanian plant, the current known oldest species believed to be 43,000 years old.
Australian researchers sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows across 2,175 miles (3,500 km) of the Mediterranean.
They found out that the seagrass weighing 6,000 tons and stretching for 10 miles was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old.
Posidonia ocenica reproduces either sexually through flowering or asexually by generating clones of itself, giving it the ability to reach such old age.
“They are continually producing new branches. They spread very slowly and cover a very large area giving them more area to mine resources. They can then store nutrients within their very large branches during bad conditions for growth,” Professor Carlos Duarte from the University of Western Australia told the Telegraph.
However, researchers say that the patch of P. oceanica is now threatened by the unprecedented rate of environmental change imposed by current global climate change.
“They have never experienced the speed of climate that the Mediterranean is currently experiencing,” Duarte told the New Scientist.
“If climate change continues, the outlook for this species is very bad,” Duarte says. “The seagrass in the Mediterranean is already in clear decline due to shoreline construction and declining water quality and this decline has been exacerbated by climate change,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
The scientists detailed their findings online in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
climate change will kill us all!
A question that everyone should ask these bought and paid for scientist whores!
If the planet was 9 degrees warmer 4 to 9 thousand years ago than it is today, and the planets temp’s have increased .7% of one degree in the last 100 years, then why did’t these plants die from the earth being 9 degrees warmer then??????????????
The Global warming greedy whores are “”STILL”" pimping their lies.