The oldest living organisms in the world
3 min readFeb 11, 2024
- Turritopsis dohrnii and the freshwater hydrozoans of the genus Hydra are biologically immortal, so since the former appeared about 100 million years ago and the latter about 600 million years ago, although extremely unlikely (they can still be killed and/or eaten), we cannot rule out the possibility that some specimens have miraculously survived to the present day.
- Some bacterial spores can be preserved for millions of years. Bacteria dormant for as much as 250 million years have been “revived” in some salt deposits in New Mexico; others preserved in amber have been revived after 40 million years.
- Certain microorganisms, often extremophiles, called endoliths, can survive for millions of years within the tiny crevices between rocks. Some found in the South Pacific have been dated to 101.5 million years ago.
- Some nematodes found in the permafrost above the Arctic Circle were thawed out after 35,000 years, after which they started moving and feeding as if nothing had happened. A specimen of Panagrolaimus kolymaensis found in Russia under the same conditions was revived a few years ago after a whopping 46,000 years, making it currently the longest-lived multicellular organism known.
- A huge Posidonia oceanica colony near Ibiza, off the Iberian Peninsula, is estimated to have existed for about 45,000 years.
- The last extant colony of Lomatia tasmanica, a flowering plant virtually extinct in the wild and native to southwest Tasmania, has an…
