The planet’s oldest tree can divulge its secrets.

A giant tree in a forest in southern Chile has persisted for thousands of years and is in the process of being recognized as the world’s oldest.

The four-meter-diameter and 28-meter-tall trunk of this tree, known as the “Great Grandfather,” is believed to contain scientific data that could cast light on how the planet has adapted to climatic changes.

It is on the verge of surpassing Methuselah, a 4,850-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine in California, United States, as the oldest tree on Earth.

Antonio Lara, a researcher at Austral University and Chile’s center for climate science and resilience who is part of the team measuring the tree’s age, said, “It’s a survivor, there are no others that have had the opportunity to live so long.”

800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Santiago, on the edge of a ravine in a forest in the southern Los Rios region, lays the Great Grandfather.

It is a Fitzroya cupressoides, a cypress tree endemic to the southern portion of the continent.

In recent years, tourists have walked an hour through the forest to reach the new “oldest tree in the world” for photographs.

To safeguard the Great Grandfather, the national forestry agency has had to increase the number of park rangers and restrict access due to his increasing popularity.

In contrast, Methuselah’s exact location is kept private.

It is the tallest tree species in South America, also known as the Patagonian cypress.

It coexists with coigue, plum pine, and tepa trees, Darwin’s frogs, lizards, and raptors including the chucao tapaculo and Chilean hawk.

Its thick trunk has been used for centuries to construct houses and ships, and it was extensively logged in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Excitement in scientific community

In 1972, park ranger Anibal Henriquez found the tree while patrolling the forest. He perished of a heart attack while patrolling the same forest on horseback 16 years later.

“He didn’t want people and tourists to know (where it was) because he knew it was very valuable,” his daughter, park ranger Nancy Henriquez, said.

Jonathan Barichivich, the nephew of Henrique, grew up frolicking among the Fitzroya and is now one of the scientists researching the species.

Using the longest manual auger, Barichivich and Lara extracted a sample from the Great Grandfather in 2020, but they did not reach the core.

Using a predictive model, they estimated that their sample was 2,400 years old and calculated the complete age of the tree.

According to Barichivich, 80% of the probable trajectories indicate that the tree is 5,000 years old.

He hopes to publish the findings shortly.

Given that dendrochronology, the method for determining when tree rings were formed, is less accurate for elder trees due to their rotted cores, the study has generated considerable interest in the scientific community.

‘Icon of defiance’

This is not just a competition to enter the record books, however, as the Great Grandfather is a wealth of knowledge.

Lara stated, “There are numerous other reasons for this tree’s significance and the need to protect it.”

There are very few trees on Earth that are thousands of years old.

“The ancient trees have DNA and a unique past because they represent resistance and adaptation. “They are nature’s greatest athletes,” Barichivich stated.

Carmen Gloria Rodriguez, an assistant researcher at Austral University’s dendrochronology and global change laboratory, stated, “They are like an open book, and we are like the readers who read every one of their rings.”

Depending on the size of the rings, these pages depict arid and wet years.

In addition, fires and earthquakes are documented in these rings, including the most powerful earthquake in recorded history, which struck this region in 1960.

The Great-Great-Grandfather is also viewed as a time capsule that provides a glimpse into the past.

“If these trees disappear, so will an important indicator of how life adapts to global change,” said Barichivich.