Scientists have discovered 1400-year-old seagrass in the Baltic Sea, DPA reported, cited by BTA, referring to the team from the Center for ocean research "Helmholz" in Kiel, Northern Germany.
Seagrass grows by shoots below the surface of the bottom. Individual shoots have very few genetic differences. Scientists from Germany, Great Britain and the United States have used this quality of the grass to create a new type of genetic clock to determine the exact age of the plant. The deciding factor is mutations in the genetic code during reproduction.
Scientists at the University of California have provided reference values for the genetic clock from a seagrass clone kept in culture tanks for 17 years. The research was published in the journal "Nature Ecology and Evolution".
Earlier, other scientists have discovered clones that they believe are several thousand years old.
In 2022, a team led by Elizabeth Sinclair of the University of Western Australia reported that the Posidonia australis seagrass carpet 180 km off the Western Australian coast was at least 4,500 years old.
In 2018, North American scientists recorded 47,000 aspens with identical genetic material, connected to each other by their roots.
A cluster of trees, called Pando by its discoverers, has probably existed for thousands of years, according to a 2018 paper by Paul Rogers and his team at Utah State University in Plos wan.