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Asked by Einstein123jnr to Áine, Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia, Victoria on 7 Nov 2014.
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Ciarán O'Brien answered on 7 Nov 2014:
I remember reading last year that there was a marine survey that found bacteria and fungi living in the dirt half a mile below the ocean floor that took up to ten thousand years to reproduce. So unless scientists find something older, it’s probably those guys. If you want more complicated old living things, there are a few trees found in various part of the world that are up to 6-7,000 years old.
EDIT:
Aha, found it! So these bacteria and fungi have been living in the soil for maybe 100 million years, so I’m pretty sure they’re the oldest living things in the world (that we know about, anyway):
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-soil-beneath-ocean-harbor-bacteria.html
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Lydia Bach answered on 9 Nov 2014:
Hello again!
Some moss from the Antarctic is over 5 500 years old! There is an artist who went all around the world to find the oldest living things, most of them plants, check her out here:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/04/the-oldest-living-things-in-the-world/
Plants are cool, but then jelly fish called the Immortal Jellyfish! It can be found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the sea around Japan. When it’s a juvenile and really small, it swims around small larvae that looks like a jelly. When it finds a rock it settles and then becomes a polyph – pretty much an upside down jelly sitting on a rock.
But when the conditions where it planted itself become bad because of changes in temperature it can reverse to a small larvae and swim away again! That can go on forever which is why its called the immortal jelly! Maybe one of those is the oldest animal in the world?!
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Áine Broderick answered on 10 Nov 2014:
Bacillus 2-9-3 I think is the name of the bacteria that is the oldest living thing in the world.
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