Which is the most ancient life form or species still surviving on earth.?

Question

The Dinosaurs came and went away, like wise many species came and became extinct. Man is just about 2 million years old. Which is the oldest surviving species on earth?

Answer 1

The oldest living species that we can positively identify is the Ginkgo tree, which is physically indistinguishable from specimens from 140 million years ago.

The oldest living animal species is the Goblin shark, known from fossils some 80 million years ago and last recorded alive around 100 years ago. The species may currently be extinct, but it is assumed to be alive.


It is almost impossible to say which species is the oldest, since there can be considerable variation within species and likewise different species can appear physically almost identical. That means that we need a lot of really good fossils to determine whether a fossil organism is the same species as a living one.

One thing we do know for sure is that no cockroach species is the oldest living species. We just don’t have enough cockroach remains of high enough quality to make such a claim.

>>>EDIT


Look people, no single SPECIES of Coelacanth or horseshoe crab has been around for more than about 2 million years. Those GROUPS have existed for long periods of time, but the living species are only relatives of the fossil specimens. They are not the same species. If you believe other wise then tell us which specific species of Latimeria or Horseshoe crab was alive at that time, and what the fossil number is.

If we are allowed to include entire groups of organisms like "horseshoe crabs" or "coelacanths" then by far the oldest organisms are sulfur bacteria which have existed as a group for over 2.5 BILLION years.

>>>Variety is the spice of life.

Yes, and accuracy is the soul of science.

Answer 2

Horseshoe Crabs have been around for about 400 million years.
Coelacanths have been around for about 390 million years.

I think it is a toss-up. It is really hard to tell which one is older. Give or take about 10 million years. But I believe that these two are the oldest currently living species on the planet. I have found no evidence otherwise.

EDIT
WOW you don't have to be so snippy Leviter. Whatever. So the crab & the fish have a little genetic variation going on. Variety is the spice of life. LOL

Answer 3

Dinosaurs lived for 100 million years,i think that we are the ones that came and went.

Answer 4

They are stromatolites. They look like rocks in the sea but are actually huge colonies of ancient bacteria that have been around as a species for billions of years. Jules, Australia.

Answer 5

The Cockroach

Answer 6

January 30, 2002

PALM SPRINGS – Along an unremarkable stretch of desert on the outskirts of town, just off a road named for singing cowboy Gene Autry and tucked amid heaps of garbage raked by winds strong enough to polish granite, Jim Cornett thinks he's found the world's oldest living thing.

Radiocarbon tests now under way may reveal the unassuming creosote bush sprouted 11,000 or more years ago, the scientist said, meaning it could rival in age another creosote bush growing 50 miles away in the Mojave Desert.

The scraggly creosote pales in comparison to the grandeur of well known ancients like the gnarled bristlecone pine and majestic coast redwood.

Seemingly more dead than alive, the bush isn't big and certainly isn't tall. It isn't even very bushy. What the creosote bush is, Cornett is fairly certain, is ancient. If confirmed, the bush – really a 38-foot, arrow-straight line of genetically identical bushes connected at the roots – could trump another creosote bush, dubbed "King Clone." That bush, found in 1980 to be 11,700 years old, is considered the oldest living thing on Earth.

In a species that reproduces itself through cloning, any individual is theoretically as old as the species. Take King's Holly, a rare Tasmanian plant. In 1996, scientists found fossil remains of the plant near the holly's only known population.

The fossils were found to be 43,000 years old, suggesting the existing plants had grown in that location for at least that long.

A box huckleberry colony in Pennsylvania, spread over some 10 square miles, is believed to date back as far as 13,000 years.

In the case of King Clone and the bush now being studied, scientists traced one bush, not a population – back in time.

University of California, Riverside botanist Frank Vasek discovered King Clone. Over the millennia, it had grown outward into a large ring.

Vasek, now retired, said he doubted there were any creosotes older than King Clone.

Tom Van Devender, senior research scientist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Ariz., said the newly found bush could well be older than King Clone. And he doesn't believe King Clone is as old as scientists claim. He believes it is closer to 7,500 years old or younger. That's still older than the oldest bristlecone by several thousand years.

Cornett's bush grows differently than the ringlike King Clone, thanks, he said, to the merciless winds that howl through the northern outskirts of Palm Springs.

There, the wind is strong enough to smooth the granite boulders that pepper the garbage-strewn landscape and drive the blades of hundreds of power-generating windmills in the area. It also gives the creosote bush its streamlined shape.

On this patch of federal land, the bush struggles with the wind to grow outward, but none of the sprouts that grow from roots fanning out under the coarse sand survive – save those lucky enough to come up behind the windbreak formed by the original plant.

Over the centuries, the bush has formed a long line of clones. When the lead bush dies, it leaves the second in the chain to take the brunt of the wind.

The root samples being tested by Cornett came from beneath the soil upwind of the living bush, and presumably belonged to a genetically identical predecessor that died thousands of years ago. The trace remains of roots linking the living and dead portions of the bush support that hypothesis, Cornett said.

The creosote bush, Larrea tridentata, is the hallmark perennial of the warm deserts of North and South America. When crushed, or after a rainfall, its small, waxy leaves give off the pungent, petroleumlike smell that gives it its name.

Answer 7

Jules G is correct. Stromatalites still exsist to this day and are also the oldest fossils found, dating back over3 billion years.

Answer 8

If you are talking only about multicelled organisms, the Coelancath would probably fit the bill.

If you include single celled life, then Archaebacteria are the answer.

Answer 9

Reptiels

Answer 10

the cocroach, sharks, alligators, turtles...all have been around forever