The “Great Grandfather” cypress located in Chile is widely regarded as the world’s oldest tree, its rings telling a tale that spans over five millennia.
In a forest in southern Chile, a giant tree has survived for thousands of years.
Known as the “Great Grandfather,” the trunk of this tree, measuring four meters in diameter and 28 meters tall, is also believed to contain scientific information that could shed light on how the planet has adapted to climatic changes.
Believed to be more than 5,000 years old, it is on the brink of replacing Methuselah, a 4,850-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine found in California in the United States, as the oldest tree on the planet.
“It’s a survivor; no others have had the opportunity to live so long,” said Antonio Lara, a researcher at Austral University and Chile’s Center for Climate Science and Resilience, who is part of the team measuring the tree’s age.
The Great Grandfather lies on the edge of a ravine in a forest in the southern Los Rios region, 800 kilometers south of Santiago.
It is a Fitzroya cupressoides, a cypress tree endemic to the continent’s south.
Recently, tourists have walked an hour through the forest to the spot to have a photograph beside the new “oldest tree in the world.”
Due to its growing fame, the national forestry body has had to increase the number of park rangers and restrict access to protect the Great Grandfather.
By contrast, the exact location of Methuselah is kept a secret.
Also known as the Patagonian cypress, it is the largest tree species in South America.
It lives alongside other tree species, such as coigue, plum pine, and tepa,
There are very few thousands-year-old trees on the planet.
“They are like an open book, and we are like the readers who read every one of their rings,” said Carmen Gloria Rodriguez, an assistant researcher at the Dendrochronology and Global Change Laboratory at Austral University.
Those pages show dry and rainy years, depending on the width of the rings.
In its rings are recorded fires and earthquakes, such as the most powerful tremor in history that hit this area in 1960.
The Great Grandfather is also considered a time capsule that can offer a window into the past.
