Ever since he was a baby, scientist Jonathan Barichivich sensed that the “Nice Grandfather”, the alerce tree — or Patagonian cypress — that his household painstakingly took care of in Los Ríos in southern Chile, was particular. Now, greater than three a long time later, he has found why: at almost 5,500 years previous, it may nicely be the oldest tree on the earth.
The invention took place nearly by likelihood, when Barichivich was learning the impression of local weather change on alerce timber, a conifer species native to Patagonia that’s threatened by a wide range of elements, similar to wildfires, logging and drought.
“We obtained a small pattern of the tree and, though it was not the preliminary goal of the analysis, we have been capable of estimate its age. We have been very stunned to find that it’s a lot older than we thought, since we thought it was between 3,500 and 4,000 years previous,” he tells Efe in entrance of the just about 30 meter-tall big.
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