Earth's Most Ancient Living Things

Rachel Sussman is a photographer and traveler.For nearly a decades, she have travelled around the world to capture world's oldest living things from 2,000 year old La Llareta to 100,000 years old Sea Grass. Details of her discovery, along with a foreword by the science writer were released as a photo book.

1) Posidonia Sea Grass : 100,000 Years Old (Balearic Island, Spain)

It lives in the UNESCO-protected waterway between the islands of Ibiza and Formentera

2) Eucalyptus : 13,000 Years Old (New South Wales, Australia)

This critically endangered eucalyptus is around 13,000 years old, and one of fewer than five individuals of its kind left on the planet

3) Mojave Yucca : 12,000 Years Old (Mojave Desert, California)

The approximately 12,000-year-old creosote bush and Mojave yucca both have remarkable circular structures, pushing slowly outward from a central originating stem.

4) Huon Pines : 10,500 Years Old (Mount Read, Tasmania)

Fire destroyed much of this clonal colony of Huon Pines (as seen in this photograph) on Mount Read, Tasmania, but a substantial portion of it survived.

5) Spruce Gran Picea : 9,550 Years Old (Fulufjallet, Sweden)

This 9,950-year-old tree is like a portrait of climate change. The mass of branches near the ground grew the same way for roughly 9,500 years

6) Antarctic Moss : 5,500 Years Old (Elephant Island, Antarctica)

This 5,500-year-old moss bank lives right around the corner from where the Shackleton Expedition was marooned 100 years ago on Elephant Island, Antarctica

7) Bristlecone Pine : 5,000 years old (White Mountain, California)

 In the 1960’s a then-grad student cut down what would have been the oldest known tree in the world while retrieving a lost coring bit. A cross section of that tree was placed in a Nevada casino

8) Welwitschia : 2,000 Years Old (Namib-Naukluft Desert, Namibia)

Despite appearances, it only has two single leaves, which it never sheds. National plant of Namibia

9) Baobab : 2,000+ Years Old (Kruger National Park, South Africa)

Despite appearances, it only has two single leaves, which it never sheds

10) Stromatolites : 2,000-3,000 Years Old (Carbla Station, Western Australia)

11) La Llareta : 2,000+ Years Old (Atacama Desert, Chile)

What looks like moss covering rocks is actually a very dense, flowering shrub that happens to be a relative of parsley, living in the extremely high elevations of the Atacama Desert

(credit via Rachel Sussman)