Australian Scientists Discover 'Oldest Living Thing On Earth'

Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 04:51 · Score: 0

They found subby's mom?

wow by irussel · 2012-02-07 04:52 · Score: 5, Funny

And here i was thinking they were talking about Joan Rivers...

Re:wow by j00r0m4nc3r · 2012-02-07 05:19 · Score: 1

Joan Rivers doesn't count because she is a cyborg now
Re:wow by Tsingi · 2012-02-07 05:44 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's a tree that's 80,000 years old. Kind of conflicts with the 43,000 year number in TFA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
Re:wow by bloodhawk · 2012-02-07 07:14 · Score: 1

The article did say "Living" thing.
Re:Wow by SleazyRidr · 2012-02-07 09:39 · Score: 1

Who's John McCain?

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Re:wow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 18:28 · Score: 0

The 43,000 number likely refers to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Lomatia which may have been around longer than 100k years.
Re:wow by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-14 07:57 · Score: 0

So you are purporting that a tree is not a "living" thing?

BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 04:53 · Score: 5, Informative

the seagrass has been able to reach such old age because it can reproduce asexually and generate clones of itself. Organisms that can only reproduce sexually are inevitably lost at each generation, he added.

So actual news story is that Australian scientists have decided that a clone of an organism is the same organism, although they are not the same organism.

On a less snarky note, the article says it's the oldest living species. Which is a completely different story.

Re:BS Summary and Article title by rodrigoandrade · 2012-02-07 04:59 · Score: 1, Funny

TY, you beat me to it.
It's almost like saying I'm 80,000 years old because I inherited a gene from a Neanderthal.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by flyingfsck · 2012-02-07 05:10 · Score: 4, Funny

I'm sure you wife will think that explains it all.

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Re:BS Summary and Article title by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:15 · Score: 4, Informative

No, it's like saying you're 80,000 years old because a Neanderthal with the amazing ability to grow back both halves when cut up like a sea star/starfish has left you behind.
But don't take the Telegraph article too seriously: they couldn't even get the species name correct. (There's an 'a' on the end that's missing.) Here's the journal article in PLoS ONE.

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Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:16 · Score: 0

Right, I think they are trying to knock the Pando off the top of the clonal plant colonies list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms#Clonal_plant_colonies
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

This argument holds no water. Your cells replace almost completely every few years, does that make you a different organism than before?
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:29 · Score: 0

well, that's why journalist/reporter also means news-maker.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 06:06 · Score: 0

You're not the time, Kenf! You're not the time!
Re:BS Summary and Article title by flyingsquid · 2012-02-07 06:38 · Score: 5, Informative

There's pretty much no way these colonies can be 200,000 years old. During the last ice age, 15,000 years ago, the sea level was about 400 feet lower. That means that during the Ice Age, these seagrass meadows would have been on dry land, and you'd have regular old grass, not seagrass. There were literally Neanderthals and wooly rhinoceros walking around on this terrain. I was curious how the authors could possibly have missed this; it turns out they didn't; the Australian news article just does a bad job of summarizing the research.
From the PLOS article:
The scenario of a km-range spread achieved exclusively through clonal growth requires that the clones reach a minimum age of about 12,500 years. Applying the same estimates to the genets shared between the two pairs of meadows, located 7 km apart between Formentera and Ibiza and 15 km apart around a cape in Formentera (Fig. 3), yields a minimum age estimate between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene. Although there is no biologically compelling reason to exclude this possibility, we consider it to be an unlikely scenario because local sea level changes during the last ice age (from 80,000 to 10,000 years) would place these sampling locations on land (the sea was 100 metres below its present level).
Anyway, it just drives home the point- if you really want to understand the issue, go back to the source material, not the media summary that was done on a tight deadline. It raises a question though- if seagrass really grows that slowly, how do you get these vast colonies? One possibility is storms. Since seagrasses are in nearshore environments, that means that storms can tear them up; currents can then pick up and move the plants, perhaps for miles. Every once in a while, some of those uprooted plants might luckily get transplanted into a hospitable habitat down current, and you can get a single colony rapidly spreading out over a huge area. Effectively, the plant could seed itself without actually using seeds.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 07:03 · Score: 0

Yes. Yes it does. It's just a bitch getting your driver's license updated.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 07:16 · Score: 0

Yes.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 07:18 · Score: 1

So actual news story is that Australian scientists have decided that a clone of an organism is the same organism, although they are not the same organism.
The spectrum of biology does not fit into neat little buckets. Every time you create a binary schism like "organism" vs "not an organism", you run across something that falls halfway in between.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by avandesande · 2012-02-07 08:17 · Score: 1

...Except that by the virtue of being able to grow shoots in the correct direction, the patch of grass can 'move' in such a way to remain alive.

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Re:BS Summary and Article title by Genda · 2012-02-07 08:40 · Score: 1

On that note... Here is a 12,000 year old creosote bush, and its the same plant. So, though it may not be the oldest lawn in the world, it is probably the oldest single life form (with perhaps the exception of certain ancient bacteria which might be virtually immortal.)
Re:BS Summary and Article title by gmhowell · 2012-02-07 13:42 · Score: 1

This argument holds no water. Your cells replace almost completely every few years, does that make you a different organism than before?
Of course not, because you still have the same soul, silly.

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Re:BS Summary and Article title by rastos1 · 2012-02-07 19:48 · Score: 2

So it depends on whether you have OEM or full license?
Re:BS Summary and Article title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-08 05:33 · Score: 0

Not true for some cells. Example: neurons. You are born with all that you'll ever have.
Re:BS Summary and Article title by kurzweilfreak · 2012-02-08 17:26 · Score: 1

False.

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Already slashdotted, it seems by mpbrede · 2012-02-07 04:53 · Score: 1

Can't reach the site. Boohoo.

Re:Already slashdotted, it seems by AC-x · 2012-02-07 05:02 · Score: 2

Works fine here, must just be your connection. I don't think Slashdot traffic will be taking The Telegraph's website down any time soon :)
Re:Already slashdotted, it seems by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:16 · Score: 2

The real deal is publicly accessible (I think.) You might find it more engaging!

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Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by rodrigoandrade · 2012-02-07 04:53 · Score: 4, Informative

Just to be clear, the actual plant isn't nearly that old. The original plant that started the cloning process was 200,000 years old.

Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by LWATCDR · 2012-02-07 04:57 · Score: 1

So are they the same plant or not? If a clone has a mutation or a transcription error is it really the same plant? Or did they have no transcription errors?

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:21 · Score: 5, Informative

Transcription errors are inevitable in small quantities, but in general plant clones are considered one organism. Since we humans don't (except in severe obesity) generally grow by spreading around, it's hard for us to understand sometimes exactly what's going on here, but what happened is that the plant just kept putting down more roots and foliage, gradually covering a large area of the ocean floor. Then, chunks died off. It's not like it's some kind of sporing or budding process; except due to accident, the parts of a huge plant like this are always connected. Wikipedia's being unresponsive right now, but the largest trees and fungi in the world work the same way—and since their roots are buried way down underneath so much soil, we're not sure if they're still connected or not.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by TheCarp · 2012-02-07 05:54 · Score: 1

Hmmm all true, i can't disagree.... I think in terms of organism though, I would call them a separate organism if the connection is servered. Otherwise, its all just one plant. A single fungus can kill both parts if its connected, a single bacteria. The parts can share nutes or signaling hormones...one plant.
Once its severed, and each part lives or dies of its own accord. then.... separate organisms.
So... all the Navel orange trees, despite being clones, are their own organism. However, a forest of bamboo....all a single plant.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:59 · Score: 1

This colony is believed to have clonal members hundreds of kilometres across. Makes it difficult to figure out exactly how divided up they are... and also makes you wonder if we should even bother drawing the distinction.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by cusco · 2012-02-07 06:10 · Score: 1

I guess I haven't been paying attention. The last I knew there was a 20,000 year old fungus in the Upper Peninsual of Michigan that was supposed to be the oldest single organism. Didn't realize that they were now counting plant clones as being the same as the original plant.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by jeffeb3 · 2012-02-07 06:16 · Score: 1

I think most cells in the body are replaced on a regular basis. So are how old are you? By your standard, you are only a couple months old. Bodies are constantly copying cells, and if we could survive like the brooms in fantasia after being chopped into little bits, then I would say that's pretty close to asexual reproduction.
Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by LWATCDR · 2012-02-07 06:23 · Score: 1

Okay I can see that if they grow by runners. I was thinking they produced seeds asexually too make "clones". If somehow the roots or runners where cut then do they become two individuals? If so then does that mean that for some plants the distinction is just mechanical in nature and not genetic? I would also assume that they would tend to evolve more slowly than other organisms since their only mechanisms for change are transcription errors in the cloning process.
Sorry if my questions seem a bit dim. Out of all the sciences I took biology was my least favorite.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by mgemmons · 2012-02-07 06:49 · Score: 1

Just to be clear, the original plant that started the cloning process was not 200,000 years old. According to TFA it was between 12,000 and 200,000.

Honestly /., if you are going to use questionable scientific articles from the Telegraph, can you at least not make it more sensationalist by purposefully misquoting the age of the plant?
Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by TheCarp · 2012-02-07 08:02 · Score: 1

Well.... I think we should draw the distinction when it matters, and not when it doesn't. In the end labels are just labels. If application of a specific label does't male sense, or there isn't enough information to apply it, then don't.
However, when the distinction matters, and when there is enough information to make it....thats where I would tend to draw the lines.

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"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:04 · Score: 1

Well, again, there's the thing. They think the roots of the 80,000-year-old Pando aspen grove are still connected, but can't prove it.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:15 · Score: 1

Nah, you're spot on. Plants are indeed ridiculously complicated and slow at doing things. We estimate most higher plants have about four to five times the number of genes that humans do, and we still have very little idea about why they might decide to just grow instead of reproducing sexually, but it may be due to a malfunction (vaguely equivalent to a tumour that causes you to grow an entire copy of yourself sticking out of your left arm, recursively.) Because plants are so good at recovering themselves when divided, gardeners and horticulturists sometimes use cuttings of exotic plants when seeds won't work, or even in hope of hybridizing similar plants.
The roots do indeed get cut up all the time, but as for organism independence, that still leaves the "If the PRC collapses and the Taiwanese government takes over mainland China again, is it the original Chinese government?" question. Or in a more computer-y sense, "if you delete all signs of a viral infection but the boot sector, then the virus comes back from that boot sector, then you clean the boot sector but forget to delete the other parts, is it still the same infection?" Or, as proposed in 'John Dies At The End', "If you replace both the handle and the head of an axe with identical parts, one at a time, is it the same axe?"

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by LWATCDR · 2012-02-07 11:41 · Score: 1

And that is why I didn't like Biology. Maybe the term individual is just illogical when talking about plants. So maybe that means that plants are less abile to adapt to changes in environment but maybe they are more abile to endure changes in the environment? After all very few animals can recover from being chopped into pieces except some lik starfish and some flat worms.

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Re:Clone Wars (or Sensationalist Headline) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 15:36 · Score: 0

The question is which part is the original and which is the clone?

200,000 Years Old? by omganton · 2012-02-07 04:54 · Score: 5, Funny

This "scientific discovery" directly conflicts with my belief that the entire universe is only 6000 years old.

Re:200,000 Years Old? by mr1911 · 2012-02-07 05:08 · Score: 3, Funny

The only reasonable conclusion is that scientists are heretics and must all be killed.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by na1led · 2012-02-07 05:13 · Score: 1

Time has been speeding up since 6000 years ago. The earth used to go around the sun once every million years.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Serif · 2012-02-07 05:21 · Score: 1

This "scientific discovery" directly conflicts with my belief that the entire universe is only 6000 years old.
It's 6016 years (give or take a year), and I agree this so called "scientific discovery" offends religious beliefs and so all articles about it on the interwebs should be removed immediately!
I'd write more about it, except I've got to get back to drawing my cartoons of Muhammad and writing rude limericks about the Thai royal family.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:24 · Score: 2

Mother nature called. She said that was very quaint and reminded humanity as a civilization that it would not be getting any dinner for the next five hundred years unless it smartened up, bathed, and cleaned its room, and stopped making excuses about imaginary friends that live in the sky.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by cupantae · 2012-02-07 05:28 · Score: 2

If someone says something is >6,000 years old, you should take that to mean, "God gave it an apparent age of X-6000 years at creation".

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by jittles · 2012-02-07 05:47 · Score: 1

Mother nature called. She said that was very quaint and reminded humanity as a civilization that it would not be getting any dinner for the next five hundred years unless it smartened up, bathed, and cleaned its room, and stopped making excuses about imaginary friends that live in the sky.
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That didn't sound like a car analogy to me...
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:55 · Score: 1

Borrow the car?! Borrow the car?! How about cleaning your room, young man? You can't receive guests, much less alien civilizations, in a mess like this!

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-02-07 05:56 · Score: 1

Strange how an immature jab is indistinguishable from an earnest profession. It's almost as if the beliefs themselves are patently immature.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Marc_Hawke · 2012-02-07 06:00 · Score: 1

Don't worry. They didn't say it was 200,000 years old. They said according to their measurements it appeared to be 200,000 years old. Once they get past a certain date, they don't have any documentation of how old something is and they are simply relying on one set of measurements to confirm another set of measurements.
I'm sure they did their best and were very very careful, but in the end the measurements are still based on assumptions that have no empirical proof. I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm just saying that their information is resting on a theoretical foundation that you have to just accept in order to proceed.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 06:08 · Score: 0

6000 is 6016 to one significant digit
Re:200,000 Years Old? by cusco · 2012-02-07 06:17 · Score: 1

That theoretical foundation that you have to just accept seems to be fairly solid, in that it's the very same theoretical foundation that they build integrated circuits, nuclear bombs and particle accellerators on. Religion on the other hand is resting on fact-free foundation of faith which is frequently in direct contradiction with actual scientificly established fact. Whoops, I'm late for church, better go so that I don't get sent to hell.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 06:20 · Score: 0

I expected this obvious post here, but not so soon, and not modded so high. I'm surprised four people found it funny.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by dwye · 2012-02-07 06:37 · Score: 1

Mother nature called. . . , and stopped making excuses about imaginary friends that live in the sky.
As opposed to imaginary friends that run nature (and complain about certain margarine brands, as I recall)?
This is Ford complaining about the propriety of GM producing Corvettes that can reach double the maximum speed limit, and announcing that they will be reintroducing the Shelby GT, in the same announcement (to give the required car analogy).
Re:200,000 Years Old? by clausiam · 2012-02-07 06:49 · Score: 1

Blasphemy - Earth going around the Sun. It's the other way around you heretic. Earth is the Center afterall!
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Creepy · 2012-02-07 07:51 · Score: 1

The Jehovah's Witnesses I met said any object allegedly over 6000(ish) years is a trick of Lucifer's to lead you from faith.
I laughed at them then (also their maths - a generation is exactly 20 years?!), and then again a few years later when the world didn't unexpectedly end like they predicted on the day they predicted. I've never quite figured out why Satan is so enamored with this world, since all the angels were granted God's power (and if Satan thinks it is too difficult to make his own world, faking rocks and plants and stuff would be a bit too much work, too). My current theory is God and Satan have a bet going.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by jzuccaro · 2012-02-07 07:56 · Score: 1

yep...
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-02-07 07:57 · Score: 1

Could we put this one to rest, maybe?
Seriously, I can't recall the last time I heard a religious person make the claim. It's 100% sarcastic atheists. It's getting to be the airline food joke of the geekverse.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-02-07 08:01 · Score: 1

I've never quite figured out why Satan is so enamored with this world
He's got an enormous coke habit.
Also: whores
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 08:22 · Score: 0

Whoosh.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:24 · Score: 1

Didn't you hear? Hydrogenated alkenes are the devil.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by wheeda · 2012-02-07 08:58 · Score: 1

Sadly my religion believe the earth is ~6000 years old. I try not to think about how silly that is and try to take the rest of what they say seriously. It is difficult. Seventh Day Adventist...
Re:200,000 Years Old? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 09:07 · Score: 0

That sounds like a Galileo reference, except the Pope didn't say heliocentricism was wrong. Plus Catholicism isn't a Young Earth religion.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by bolthole · 2012-02-07 09:24 · Score: 1

Religion on the other hand is resting on fact-free foundation of faith
Incorrect. More on this lower down.

frequently in direct contradiction with actual scientificly established fact.
The funny thing about "scientifically established fact", is that it is all so often proved wrong. There are plenty of "scientific facts" held to be fact 100 years ago, that are now scoffed at. But of course, THIS year, is the year that science knows EVERYTHING, right? that's good to know. I guess the scientific future is very boring, since everything is now known, and 100% correct. Excellent.
Decent religions are based on fact. Yes, facts that conflict with "science". They have a technical term for this; it's called a "miracle". If miracles could be explained by science, then they wouldnt be miraculous any more.
"The fact is", that miracles have occured. Science is inadequate to explain what happened in those cases. Therefore, something more than science is needed.
I will also point out, that a blind belief in "Everything can be explained by Science!! If it's not explainable, it didnt happen!!" is, by its very nature, a "religious belief". If someone denies that something that happened, actually happened, based on their personally held beliefs... they are by that action, showing themselves to be a reality-denying, religious bigot.
Something for the more intelligent readers to ponder.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by SteveFoerster · 2012-02-07 09:55 · Score: 1

Yeah, and besides, heliocentrism is racist because it promotes the European "ideas" of Copernicus over the venerable African wisdom of Ptolemy!

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 10:02 · Score: 1

Really? Really? Damn; I thought I had more street cred than that.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 10:23 · Score: 0

"he funny thing about "scientifically established fact", is that it is all so often proved wrong."

Please read The Relativity of Wrong.
Re:200,000 Years Old? by SpongeBob+Hitler · 2012-02-07 14:15 · Score: 0

Mother nature called. She said that was very quaint and reminded humanity as a civilization that it would not be getting any dinner for the next five hundred years unless it smartened up, bathed, and cleaned its room, and stopped making excuses about imaginary friends that live in the sky.
Mother nature called. She said stop anthropomorphizing her, or she'll boil your ass in a bag and have that ass for breakfast.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by SpongeBob+Hitler · 2012-02-07 14:23 · Score: 0

Could we put this one to rest, maybe?
Seriously, I can't recall the last time I heard a religious person make the claim. It's 100% sarcastic atheists. It's getting to be the airline food joke of the geekverse.
Try visiting the Southeast US. I heard this a lot when I was there. On second thought, don't visit the Southeast US. Just nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by rthille · 2012-02-07 16:42 · Score: 1

Why is it that "miracles" happen so much less often today, with a more educated population? Did god just get tired?
Miracles don't happen. Stories about miracles happen.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by cusco · 2012-02-07 18:23 · Score: 1

Science is inadequate to explain what happened in those cases

Science a century ago was inadequate to explain lightning. Science six decades ago was inadequate to explain how genes were stored and expressed. Science ten years ago was inadequate to explain why the Spanish Flu epidemic was so lethal. Just because it can't be explained today doesn't mean that it never will be.

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Re:200,000 Years Old? by BenJaminus · 2012-02-08 01:24 · Score: 1

I've seen a couple of miracles in the last 10 years (and I'm not making a joke either like it's a miracle I got married).
I'd suggest that you just haven't heard about them.
In case you're interested I've seen a friend's back problem (that was caused by one leg being longer than the other) cured by being prayed for in church. The leg grew to the same length as the other. My other best one was with a lighting desk that wasn't working and that the owners wanted us to confirm wasn't working so they could press their case for buying a new one. Well, it wasn't working and we couldn't make it work. We prayed about what to do and then tried it again (not doing anything different than before) and it worked fine. In both cases I talked to the relevant people a year or more after and they were both still fixed :)
Through links with church and other christians I've heard of other miracles and regularly have impressive answers to prayer that could be considered little miracles. Certainly enough to challenge the argument that they could have just been coincidence.
So, sorry that that's another story about miracles for you but it's what I saw.

I bet it tastes like... like... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 04:54 · Score: 0

mmmmmmmmmmurder. ;P

How do you define age though? by Viol8 · 2012-02-07 04:57 · Score: 1

It might be the same genetic organism as from 200,000 years ago but is any part of that single organism alive today actually that old? Or are we just talking 200K years since its DNA was last involved in sexual reproduction?

Re:How do you define age though? by The+Wild+Norseman · 2012-02-07 05:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Or are we just talking 200K years since its DNA was last involved in sexual reproduction?
Oh, that reminds me! My wedding anniversary is coming up soon...

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Re:How do you define age though? by tnk1 · 2012-02-07 05:14 · Score: 2

That's a good point, but you know, if some human's body managed to survive 200,000 years by regenerating all of its cells in a configuration that allow it to remain almost unchanged in appearance and function over that time period, you might well consider that human to be 200,000 years old, even though not one atom of the human is the same as that of their body when they were in their first century of life.
If we define an individual as a process instead of as a static object, you can come up with different results for what you consider to be an individual. After all, even if not every part of us is recycled constantly, I'd say that most humans are not the same components that they were at any time in the past. Even the cells that don't go through normal cell division and death are probably made up of entirely different molecules and atoms than they had when you were born.
Re:How do you define age though? by sznupi · 2012-02-08 06:50 · Score: 1

Food for thought[1]: your body, your cells constantly "recycle" large part of the matter used as their constituent parts - there are quite few of the atoms forming your body at birth remaining in you (also proportionally, accounting for later mass gains).
So... what is your age, are you the same human as at birth?[2]

BTW, ponder in which ways what you thought as the precious part of your body gets disposed of... ;p
Or, more seriously, how it is quite universal for humans to believe in "really me" surviving death of all things, with their body essentially discarded - evidently we are quite open to accepting the idea of single entity, single being continuing its existence despite none of its verifiable original parts doing so (maybe/hopefully it means there won't be too much fuss about mind uploading)
Also: the ship of Theseus.

1. Even seems like not a bad pun here, in context.
2. TBH I would argue not quite (likewise me of course) - the "monolithic me" is largely a myth allowed also by our, really, quite poor memory and such; hiding from us the full realization of immense changes over life (we generally seem more similar to our peers than to ourselves at very different life stages), or how we generally function (go through the list of cognitive biases, this is our primary mode of operation; or, consider how split brain patients seem almost unchanged post-operation, basically just with few curious "glitches")

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Also known as... by milbournosphere · 2012-02-07 04:57 · Score: 0

your mom.

Endangered? by kungfugleek · 2012-02-07 04:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

FTA:

But Prof Duarte said that while the seagrass is one of the world's most resilient organisms, it has begun to decline due to coastal development and global warming. "If climate change continues, the outlook for this species is very bad," he said.

But if it's 200k years old, hasn't it already survived some serious climate change?

Re:Endangered? by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-02-07 05:06 · Score: 1

It's not the temperature, it's the rate.

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Re:Endangered? by mr1911 · 2012-02-07 05:09 · Score: 3, Funny

But if it's 200k years old, hasn't it already survived some serious climate change?
That was different. We're talking about man made climate change, which is obviously much worse and must be stopped.

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Re:Endangered? by SuricouRaven · 2012-02-07 05:14 · Score: 1

In a sense, correct. Human-induced climate change threatens to happen far faster than natural climate change, over a period of decades or centuries rather than tens of millenia. That type of sudden shift doesn't occur naturally short of a globally significent event like a supervolcano eruption.
Re:Endangered? by cusco · 2012-02-07 05:16 · Score: 2

Yes, but previous changes took centuries and millenia, not decades. Species, even asexual ones like this, can adapt to slow change fairly well. Rapid change is generally catastrophic.

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Re:Endangered? by tnk1 · 2012-02-07 05:21 · Score: 2

There has been at least one, and possibly a few supervolcanic eruptions in 200,000 years. The sharp climate change rate due to those would have made current global warming trends look like statistical noise in comparison.
That's not to say that humans can't affect species in specific ways all their own, but that requires the "standard climate disaster" warning to be modified to make that clear or some skeptics will start to have a point about the lack of rigor in statements coming from some scientists.
Re:Endangered? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:26 · Score: 2

It says the following in the journal article:

Nevertheless, even though such phenotypic plasticity possibly evolved across millennia, it may well be challenged by the unprecedented rate of environmental change imposed by current global climate change [55], including temperature increase and ocean acidification, and recent anthropogenic pressure on coastal areas resulting in changes in water quality, eutrophication, and nutrient load, particularly in seagrass meadows [56].
Please spend the rest of the day in silent introspection.

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Re:Endangered? by munch117 · 2012-02-07 05:29 · Score: 1

But if it's 200k years old, hasn't it already survived some serious climate change?
Sure it has. And every time it's been like playing russian roulette with 5 live rounds, and most of its peers have been wiped out. And now there's only this little patch left, and we're putting 5 rounds in the chamber once again. It may be particularly resilient, but it may as well just have been lucky.
Re:Endangered? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:37 · Score: 1

FTA:

But Prof Duarte said that while the seagrass is one of the world's most resilient organisms, it has begun to decline due to coastal development and global warming.
"If climate change continues, the outlook for this species is very bad," he said.
But if it's 200k years old, hasn't it already survived some serious climate change?
Nope, sorry. Humans have only been causing climate change for about 100 years or so now.
Re:Endangered? by ArcherB · 2012-02-07 05:48 · Score: 0

It's not the temperature, it's the rate.
So are you saying that if the temperature rises too fast, these plants will die, right?
About 200,000 spring times will disagree with you.

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Re:Endangered? by ArcherB · 2012-02-07 05:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

In a sense, correct. Human-induced climate change threatens to happen far faster than natural climate change, over a period of decades or centuries rather than tens of millenia. That type of sudden shift doesn't occur naturally short of a globally significent event like a supervolcano eruption.
So have there been any supervolcano eruptions in the past 200,000 years that should have killed this plant off?
I'm not trying to debate the merits of global warming here. I'm just agreeing with the ancestors of this post who say that trying to pull the global warming debate into every single things is BS.

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Re:Endangered? by DerekLyons · 2012-02-07 05:57 · Score: 2

There's been plenty of dramatic short term changes too, like the Little Ice Age. Climate change, over the history of the Earth, happens at all manner of timescales - it's not the smooth(ish) sinusoidal wave many mistakenly view it as. Study this graph, which shows just the last two millenia for multiple examples.
Re:Endangered? by GameboyRMH · 2012-02-07 06:20 · Score: 1

In case you're actually this dumb and not just being obtuse:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2658669&cid=38956039

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Re:Endangered? by cusco · 2012-02-07 06:24 · Score: 1

Look at the post just above mine. The temperature is NOT the only thing that's changing. This thing is getting hit with a dozen major changes to its lifestyle simultaneously, and all of them are proceeding at a pace far above the normal rate of change. These changes are also long-duration ones, not short-term crisies that can be waited out like a volcano eruption or El Nino.

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Re:Endangered? by radtea · 2012-02-07 06:31 · Score: 1

Yes, but previous changes took centuries and millenia, not decades
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event
"In the Northern Hemisphere, they take the form of rapid warming episodes, typically in a matter of decades, each followed by gradual cooling over a longer period. For example, about 11,500 years ago, averaged annual temperatures on the Greenland icepack warmed by around 8 C over 40 years, in three steps of five years (see,[2] Stewart, chapter 13), where a 5 C change over 30-40 years is more common."
Please stop spreading nonsense. There are plenty of legitimate concerns regarding human impacts on the environment (and AGW is amongst them, although much over-rated in my view.) But false and hysterical claims do no one any favours. What humans are doing to the current environment doesn't have to be the Worst Thing Ever to be really quite bad enough to do something about it by changing your own lifestyle to be more sustainable.

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Re:Endangered? by bbbaldie · 2012-02-07 06:41 · Score: 1

My thoughts exactly. But it's very proper and liberal to bring up climate change every time we talk about nature. (sigh)
Re:Endangered? by ArcherB · 2012-02-07 07:04 · Score: 0

In case you're actually this dumb and not just being obtuse:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2658669&cid=38956039
I was replying to the comment above mine. I even quoted it. He said, "It's not the temperature, it's the rate."
Notice that he did not say, "It's not the temperature, it's the rate, ocean acidification, and recent anthropogenic pressure on coastal areas resulting in changes in water quality, eutrophication, and nutrient load, particularly in seagrass meadows."
If he had said that
you have a point;
Else
you are just a moron;

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Re:Endangered? by bloodhawk · 2012-02-07 07:21 · Score: 1

There have been far faster climate changes over the course of the past 200,000 years than the current man-made one. Some by as much as a 10 degrees average swing in just a few years.
Re:Endangered? by mr1911 · 2012-02-07 07:31 · Score: 1

Ahhh yes, silent introspection of scholarly works citing hypothesis and speculation. I stand in awe in the shadow of your scientific prowess.

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Re:Endangered? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 07:47 · Score: 1

One: citation 55 is a study demonstrating that actual sea grasses have been disappearing at an accelerating rate. Please don't make claims without doing basic research.
Two: scientific hypotheses and speculation are generally built from plausible extrapolations from available data. Please don't pretend that we know so little about the universe that we can't predict basic elements of the near future of a closed system. You're insulting thousands of years of work in mathematics and science with your shamanism.

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Re:Endangered? by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-02-07 08:04 · Score: 1

Please spend the rest of the day in silent introspection.
I forwarded this to my boss. He didn't buy it. :-(
Re:Endangered? by wfolta · 2012-02-07 08:12 · Score: 1

Tsk, tsk, you simply do not get more funding for biological research now-a-days unless you mention that climate change is going to kill the species you're studying... *unless*, of course, you are given funds to study it in more detail.
Re:Endangered? by DerekLyons · 2012-02-07 08:27 · Score: 1

Look at the post just above mine. The temperature is NOT the only thing that's changing.
I didn't claim it was. I merely pointed that your claim that changes only took place on a scale of centuries to millenia was false.

These changes are also long-duration ones, not short-term crisies that can be waited out like a volcano eruption or El Nino.
Were I talking about a short term crisis, you'd have a point. I should also point out, these are not sentient organisms that can choose to wait out a crisis - if there's decade long changes (as shown on the graph I linked to), then they either adapt or they die.
Re:Endangered? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-02-07 09:16 · Score: 0

Asking denialists to do basic research and understand how science works is futile. They don't know and they don't want to know.
(I know, I fall into the same trap sometimes. As scientists, we tend to believe that if we present enough evidence, sooner or later everyone will acknowledge it. It's baffling and frustrating to argue with people who simply refuse to think that way.)

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Re:Endangered? by mr1911 · 2012-02-07 09:48 · Score: 1

demonstrating that actual sea grasses have been disappearing at an accelerating rate.
Great. No argument with that fact the amount of sea grass is changing. No argument that the climate is changing. These are measurable facts without debate. The causal links and speculation to what correction should be made is the question.

But as is common with any challenge to the religion of global warming, the questioner is labeled a "denier", sometimes presented with circumstantial proof, and insulted.

Science that cannot tolerate to be questioned is not science.

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Re:Endangered? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 10:01 · Score: 1

Maybe you should emphasize that it came directly from Canterlot.

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Re:Endangered? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 10:11 · Score: 1

Your line of reasoning seems familiar somehow. Please, present evidence as to why this science needs to be held to the unusually rigorous standards you propose when Occam's razor has done its job just fine for absolutely everything else. And while you're at it, please tell us who first introduced you to the idea that anthropogenic global warming isn't real, so that I can inform you which oil company paid them to say that.

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Re:Endangered? by mr1911 · 2012-02-07 10:53 · Score: 1

Please, present evidence as to why this science needs to be held to the unusually rigorous standards
Please present evidence that your argument has met any standard of science.

so that I can inform you which oil company paid them to say that.
A better question: who paid for the conflicting studies?

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Re:Endangered? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 11:09 · Score: 1

That's very cute of you, but the burden of proof is still on your shoulders. C'mon; at least cite a made-up expert. I hear Dr. Fred Mbogo of the University of Bogos will do anything for a buck.

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Re:Endangered? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 11:26 · Score: 0

it's about the rate of change, dickhead
Re:Endangered? by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-02-08 05:29 · Score: 1

Tried it. He was not pleased after the fire was put out.

Wrong by koan · 2012-02-07 05:00 · Score: 2

First lets get this out of the way "Obligatory Dick Clark comment"

These plants haven't been cloning perfectly for 200,000 years, there is drift and errors in cloning too.

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Re:Wrong by vlm · 2012-02-07 05:03 · Score: 1

First lets get this out of the way "Obligatory Dick Clark comment"
These plants haven't been cloning perfectly for 200,000 years, there is drift and errors in cloning too.
So is that why a billion year old amoeba supposedly doesn't count?

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Re:Wrong by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:34 · Score: 2

Newsflash: clones are never perfect anyway. The thing is, they've been physically attached this entire time. A plant 'clonally reproducing' is nothing more than one organism putting up a bunch of completely redundant backups. It may or may not partially die off due to an accident, but the thing is that it's a single network that's been fragmented by the passage of time, not an organism deliberately reproducing. Since the distinction where one organism ends and the next begins is a made up human one, you probably shouldn't waste your time trying to figure it all out. You should know, however, that biologists consider this to be or have been one organism.

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Re:Wrong by radtea · 2012-02-07 06:40 · Score: 1

Since the distinction where one organism ends and the next begins is a made up human one, you probably shouldn't waste your time trying to figure it all out.
So exactly the same as every other distinction, then?
All edges are imposed on the world by human attention, and nothing else. Consider the distinction between "land" and "water". In some contexts we simply treat the edge between them as ideal. In other contexts we introduce other concepts: beach, littoral, intertidal zone, and so on. But when you get close to it you notice that the edge is both constantly fluctuating and "soft": the "land" is always a bit wet. Where land ends and water begins is a made up human distinction. This is generally true, with the exception of quantum phenomena where there are genuinely forbidden "gaps" between states (which is one of the things that makes quantum phenomena weird: we are not free to make up distinctions in a way that is most useful to us in a given context.)

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Re:Wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 07:37 · Score: 0

you probably shouldn't waste your time trying to figure it all out.
I'm just surprised to see someone who claims to be a biologist and therefore a member of the science community telling another person "you probably shouldn't waste your time trying to figure it all out."
I would also argue this point "not an organism deliberately reproducing" it is in fact deliberately reproducing by creating (in your own words) redundant backups.
I'm sure you will tell me not to waste my time trying to figure that out either.
Re:Wrong by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:02 · Score: 1

I very well might. The trouble is that the general public doesn't want to be faced with the stark reality that most of the reductionist labels we employ on a regular basis are terms of convenience and are nonsense from a biological perspective. We can't really say where a mitochondrion ends and the human cell containing it begins; we can't even say whether or not the mitochondrion should be considered a symbiotic bacterium or a natural component of the human cell that just so happens to be bacterial in origin. We can't say where one organism ends and the next begins; we can't say where one species ends and the next begins. All but the most simplistic species of bacteria form a mat when left to their own devices, as do (and did) many kinds of yeast—is it a primitive form of multicellular life, or just a community? What the hell, then, is the primitive organisation in a tumour? And let's not even start to get into questions about what makes up a speciation event or what's even alive—there are exceptions to every scenario and subtle condition that we have ever imagined; some people have even argued that transposons are living systems.
Maybe the distinction for what makes up an organism is about being physically separate, or having a distinct genome. Okay, hotshot: is a sperm cell an organism? An ovum? A seed? A virus? Male angler fish? What about this nightmare-inducing thing? And don't tell me it has to be independently capable of survival—there are lots of parasites that, simply, aren't.
The task of explaining all these blurry lines makes for a good book, but it doesn't really fit into a Slashdot post very well. (And for full disclosure, I was running out the door at the time.) All we can really say is that we're all blobs of proteins, nucleic acids, fats, carbohydrates, and a few trace amounts of other things stuck on for good measure. We're all... well, most of us are currently considered alive by modern science, but good luck saying anything for certain. We're still messing up entropy pretty good, at least. That counts for something.

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Re:Wrong by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-02-07 08:07 · Score: 1

First lets get this out of the way "Obligatory Dick Clark comment"
These plants haven't been cloning perfectly for 200,000 years, there is drift and errors in cloning too.

So is that why a billion year old amoeba supposedly doesn't count?

More importantly, when did Dick Clark jokes become obligatory around here?
Re:Wrong by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:27 · Score: 1

Yes. For some more rambling on the subject, there is this comment.

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Re:Wrong by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-02-07 09:31 · Score: 1

I'm just surprised to see someone who claims to be a biologist and therefore a member of the science community telling another person "you probably shouldn't waste your time trying to figure it all out."
A great deal of the day-to-day work of science is deciding what's worth figuring out in the time available and what isn't.

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species != organism by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-02-07 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

Saying "older than the oldest known species" is silly, since we can be pretty sure from both fossil and genomic evidence that modern humans have been around for about 200k years, and we're a pretty young species. "The current known oldest organism" would have been better.

OTOH ... think about this for a moment. This plant came into existence around the time the first true humans were born. For all of human history, both the few thousand years of which we have records and the much longer span of which we don't, it's just been sitting there under the sea in its little patch of ocean, doing its thing. That's pretty damn cool.

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200k Years Old? by eternaldoctorwho · 2012-02-07 05:01 · Score: 1

According to TFA, the researchers "found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old." That's a rather large range of uncertainty to be definitely saying that the species/organism is 200,000 years old as the summary does. Very likely still much older than the runner-up (at 43,000 years old), but let's not jump to assumptions.

Re:200k Years Old? by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:35 · Score: 1

You will probably find the real article more informative.

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New submitter offsafely by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:02 · Score: 0

>What I want to know is, How does it taste?
New submitter offsafely is Naked Snake, and I claim my five pounds.

Ssshh , don't mention that! by Viol8 · 2012-02-07 05:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Much as I tend to agree with the global warming consensus , that particular type of sentence does unfortunately have a habit of appearing in a lot of enviromental/biological pieces these days. It seems to be almost a standard issue cut and paste warning that [insert species here] will be affected by climate change unless we DoSomethingNow(tm). And in so doing devalues any serious debate.

Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 05:28 · Score: 2

It's actually addressed meaningfully in the journal article. I won't quote the section at you since that would be spam, I've already done it, and I'm just compulsively replying to people because people being wrong on the Internet is clearly the noblest cause ever, but there you go: it is, in fact, the rate of change in environmental conditions, not merely that it's occurring.

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Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

A guy is driving down the highway at 100 MPH. He's told that a sudden stop at this speed will kill him. "Nonsense," he says. "My speed has been 0 MPH before, and I didn't die then."
Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by radtea · 2012-02-07 06:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

it is, in fact, the rate of change in environmental conditions, not merely that it's occurring.
Which would be weird, given the rate of current change is rather modest compared to the Dansgaard–Oeschger events and other natural climate fluxuations over the past 200K years, particularly in the Mediterranean basin.
Don't get me wrong: I'm (mildly) skeptical about AGW (I'm a computational physicist and a great deal of climate modelling is done by climatologists who are decidedly not computational physicists) but this running about in panic in response to the issue du jour is just sad. Not everything is caused by or related to the global climate change, and it really does cheapen the debate and coarsen the public's response to events when Every Single Thing is immediately related to (and blamed on) climate change.
I'd think it far more likely that any trouble this species is in is due to the profound ecological changes in the Mediterranean in the past century due to pollution and over-harvesting of fish and whatnot, but where's the sexy big-issue "society is to blame" in that?

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Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-07 08:22 · Score: 2

Well, there's this. Which, I think, shuts down the entire conversation on its own empirical basis even if we don't understand why, but it doesn't let me make my favourite point ever about anthropogenic threats to the ecosystem: the Mediterranean is a lot dirtier than it was during the last D–O event. It seems to me not that the hilariously tragic loss in biological diversity of the next century will not be on our shoulders merely because we turned up the thermostat, but because we pumped in noxious fumes at the same time. (Have you ever seen one of those fantastically unnerving stories about the Mafia dumping nuclear waste into the sea? Yeah, gee, I wonder where all that goes...)

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Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 15:49 · Score: 0

and what do you know about 'coastal development' since that was the other half of the stated problem but is apparently of no interest to you. Everything taken together has an effect. Global warming + 8 Billion people and counting is the problem for lots of species.
Re:Ssshh , don't mention that! by radtea · 2012-02-14 03:38 · Score: 1

Yeah, I got no disagreement on how dirty the Mediterranean is or on the human impact on littoral ecosystems.
My point is that there's a huge amount of FUD around AGW/ACC that's really irrelevant to the questions a) Is dumping megatonnes of toxic shit into the air and water a good idea? and b) Is being dependent on fuels with an open carbon cycle a good idea?
It seems to me the answer to both those questions is transparently: NO, but both sides of the purely political debate around AGW seem to buy into the premise that if AGW isn't happening then it's somehow OK to keep on poisoning our world in other ways and to keep on subsidizing a family of fuels that are going to get very expensive in the present century (the hockey-stick I worry about is the price curve of fossil fuels, which is being held low by various policies that will eventually run out of steam and result in a step-function price change.)

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Great, it's been found... by cmdr_klarg · 2012-02-07 05:04 · Score: 1

Now get the hell off of it's lawn!

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Re:Great, it's been found... by bughunter · 2012-02-07 05:08 · Score: 2

It *is* a lawn...

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Re:Great, it's been found... by g0bshiTe · 2012-02-07 05:12 · Score: 1

It is it's own lawn.

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Re:Great, it's been found... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:19 · Score: 0

That's how it got to live so long.
Re:Great, it's been found... by Dunega · 2012-02-07 05:58 · Score: 1

Well then get the hell off of it before you kill it!
Re:Great, it's been found... by GameboyRMH · 2012-02-07 06:48 · Score: 1

It's so old it has become one with the lawn. Now it just says "Get off me!"

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Re:Great, it's been found... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 09:08 · Score: 0

I would say that the lawn have become so grand that it rightfully speak of itself in third person.

Looks like a disk, a black flap, and a scorpion by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:04 · Score: 0

n/t

In related news by retech · 2012-02-07 05:05 · Score: 1

The Australian government found a terrorist threat in an ancient patch of seagrass. In a statement to the media the Secretary of Defense stated: "We do not know where this seagrass comes from, it has no official documentation. It is not a recodnised form of sentient life so we eradicated it." The seagrass was promptly dispatched by pouring 30,000 barrels of crude oil over it supplied by Haliburton.

Screw tasting it by WillgasM · 2012-02-07 05:06 · Score: 2

Let's smoke it!

Has a flavor by bughunter · 2012-02-07 05:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

How does it taste?

Well, if nothing's eaten it in 200ky, then it must taste pretty crappy.

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Re:Has a flavor by F34nor · 2012-02-07 05:32 · Score: 4, Informative

http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/tree-on-the-mountain
Zhuangzi was walking on a mountain, when he saw a great tree with huge branches and luxuriant foliage. A wood-cutter was resting by its side, but he would not touch it, and, when asked the reason, said, that it was of no use for anything, Zhuangzi then said to his disciples, 'This tree, because its wood is good for nothing, will succeed in living out its natural term of years.' Having left the mountain, the Master lodged in the house of an old friend, who was glad to see him, and ordered his waiting-lad to kill a goose and boil it. The lad said, 'One of our geese can cackle, and the other cannot - which of them shall I kill?' The host said, 'Kill the one that cannot cackle.'
Next day, his disciples asked Zhuangzi, saying, 'Yesterday the tree on the mountain (you said) would live out its years because of the uselessness of its wood, and now our host's goose has died because of its want of power (to cackle) - which of these conditions, Master, would you prefer to be in?' Zhuangzi laughed and said, '(If I said that) I would prefer to be in a position between being fit to be useful and wanting that fitness, that would seem to be the right position, but it would not be so, for it would not put me beyond being involved in trouble; whereas one who takes his seat on the Dao and its Attributes, and there finds his ease and enjoyment, is not exposed to such a contingency. He is above the reach both of praise and of detraction; now he (mounts aloft) like a dragon, now he (keeps beneath) like a snake; he is transformed with the (changing) character of the time, and is not willing to addict himself to any one thing; now in a high position and now in a low, he is in harmony with all his surroundings; he enjoys himself at ease with the Author of all things; he treats things as things, and is not a thing to them: where is his liability to be involved in trouble? This was the method of Shen Nong and Huang-Di. As to those who occupy themselves with the qualities of things, and with the teaching and practice of the human relations, it is not so with them. Union brings on separation; success, overthrow; sharp corners, the use of the file; honour, critical remarks; active exertion, failure; wisdom, scheming; inferiority, being despised: where is the possibility of unchangeableness in any of these conditions? Remember this, my disciples. Let your abode be here - in the Dao and its Attributes.'
My translation?
"If you want to live to be 200,000 years old, don't be anyone's bitch."

"12,000 [to] 200,000 years old" by Rogerborg · 2012-02-07 05:08 · Score: 1

That's some pretty big error bars you're rocking there.

Just the same stunt as carbon daters have been pulling for years: keep sending in samples until the lab either gives get a range that agrees with the thesis you've already written or book that you're trying to sell, or you run out of funding.

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Re:"12,000 [to] 200,000 years old" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:19 · Score: 0

As a historologist, I can say with absolute certainty that the parent post is somewhere between 10 minutes and 15 googleplex years old.
Re:"12,000 [to] 200,000 years old" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:26 · Score: 0

Do you have a single fact to back that up?
Re:"12,000 [to] 200,000 years old" by dingo_kinznerhook · 2012-02-07 05:55 · Score: 1

You mean:

...found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk)
The original article has wording that's more precise (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0030454):

...The scenario of a km-range spread achieved exclusively through clonal growth requires that the clones reach a minimum age of about 12,500 years. Applying the same estimates to the genets shared between the two pairs of meadows, located 7 km apart between Formentera and Ibiza and 15 km apart around a cape in Formentera (Fig. 3), yields a minimum age estimate between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene.

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How does it Taste? by dcw3 · 2012-02-07 05:13 · Score: 1

Like Chicken?

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You're saying Joan Rivers is still alive? by bdwoolman · 2012-02-07 05:20 · Score: 1

Dude. Can we talk?

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Re:You're saying Joan Rivers is still alive? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:31 · Score: 0

Hottest 78 year old you're ever likely to meet.
Re:You're saying Joan Rivers is still alive? by Walt+Dismal · 2012-02-07 05:47 · Score: 1

I watched the Superbowl halftime show. I've SEEN the oldest living thing on earth, and it was DANCING.
Re:You're saying Joan Rivers is still alive? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:59 · Score: 0

I watched the Superbowl halftime show. I've SEEN the oldest living thing on earth, and it was DANCING.
You've seen the oldest thing on Earth which is still hot. There's a difference.
Re:You're saying Joan Rivers is still alive? by gmhowell · 2012-02-07 13:41 · Score: 2

I watched the Superbowl halftime show. I've SEEN the oldest living thing on earth, and it was DANCING.
You've seen the oldest thing on Earth which is still hot. There's a difference.
Betty White was in the halftime show?

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Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon

It doesn't smell by aglider · 2012-02-07 05:40 · Score: 1

As it has no nose at all!

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No Doctor Who references??? by DBCubix · 2012-02-07 05:43 · Score: 1

This is Slashdot, come on it is obvious Dr. Who was found down under wrestling a disembodied Dalek crocodile or Rupert Murdoch as one of the Cybermen.

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Old Clam by Barney_Stinson · 2012-02-07 05:46 · Score: 1

I read about a clam that was found off the coast of Iceland that was ~412 years old and I thought that was crazy. That was an eye blink compared to this.

Telegraph? Oh, wrong wires. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 05:55 · Score: 0

I don't think Slashdot traffic will be taking The Telegraph's website down any time soon

Oh, so that's the problem. We got rid of our telegraph connection when we got the telephone box on the wall with the crank to ring Tessie to connect us to another phone box.

You do realize by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 06:25 · Score: 0

The word thing and living are mutually exclusive. The word thing should only be used to describe objects that are "not living"

Bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 06:30 · Score: 0

The world was only made 6000 years ago, how the hell can something be 100,000 years old? I call bullshit.

I was expecting... by Reasonable+Facsimile · 2012-02-07 06:34 · Score: 1

... to see a picture of Larry King.

Global warming? by bbbaldie · 2012-02-07 06:39 · Score: 1

"As the water warms, the organisms move slowly to higher altitudes. The Mediterranean is locked to the north by the European continent. " How many times has the climate changed in the last 200,000 years? Blaming threats to the grass on civilization, sure, but it seems to be able to cope with ice ages and warming spells just fine. (sigh)

What I want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 07:14 · Score: 0

Will it blend?

Wow by geminidomino · 2012-02-07 07:46 · Score: 1

100+ posts and no "John McCain" jokes?

I don't know whether to be proud of slashdot, heartbroken, or depressed that my sense of humor is 4 years out of date.

How does it taste? by Taty'sEyes · 2012-02-07 08:20 · Score: 1

Probably a little like sea grass... just a guess though.

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Fruit cake by masteva · 2012-02-07 08:26 · Score: 1

Man, and I thought the fruit cake at the bottom of my freezer was old! Oh well, at least the fruit is still edible... though that is still up to debate!

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a bucket that holds almost no water by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 09:42 · Score: 0

no, only "almost" a different organism.

Aussie OG! by stevenfuzz · 2012-02-07 09:58 · Score: 1

Aussie OG: Baked back to the stone age.

How does it taste? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 11:09 · Score: 0

How does it taste?

Depends.

single-celled organisms ageless? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 17:32 · Score: 0

When a single-celled organism asexually divides, which is the original? Are they immortal?

And caulerpa by stooo · 2012-02-07 20:46 · Score: 1

"The seagrass in the Mediterranean is already in clear decline due to shoreline construction and declining water quality ... climate change"

TFA is just lacking to count in the devastating effect of the accidental introduction of the caulerpa which is colonizing more and more of the mediterranean sea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulerpa_taxifolia

The most ancient thing living will just disappear in some years or decades due to this.

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Australian Scientists Discover 'Oldest Living Thing On Earth'

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