What is the oldest living organism?
by 
Erin Albrecht
ANSWERS: 1
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Ultimately, the winner has to be a few 250-million-year-old bacteria, B. permians, which were revived in a laboratory in New Mexico after having been found in a state of "suspended animation" in a salt deposit near Carlsbad, NM. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6806/full/407844a0_fs.html) 2nd prize goes to bacteria again, shared between 40-million-year-old B. sphaericus and Staph. succinus, each found in the stomach of a bee in amber and revived in a laboratory. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7538699&dopt=Abstract and http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/48/2/511) And 3rd prize goes to a King's Holly bush in Tasmania, which has been identified and now confirmed as 43,600 years old. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/277/5325/483a and discussion at http://www.wonderquest.com/green-eggs-oldest-plant-ship-jet-race.htm#oldest-plant)
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