More than 4,000 yearssome may livedeep ocean corals. With such astonishing age, these ancient invertebrates have just become theoldest known marine beings, as published by the magazineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
In order to study the corals ofGerardia spYLeiophates sp, Brendan Roark and his team from Stanford University (USA) had to descend hundreds of meters off the coast of Hawaii, aboard a submarine. The coral fragments collected at these depths were later dated using the method of theCarbon-14.
The analyzes yielded figures of2.742 years forGerardiaY4.265years forLeiophates glaberrima. That means that while the existence of the latter dates back to the heyday of the Assyrian Empire, the latter was born in the times when theEgyptians built the great pyramid of Giza.
Although scientists already knew that animals that live in the depths of the sea at very cold temperatures tend to have a very long life as a result of a slowdown in metabolism, they did not imagine that it could spread so much. According to the new data, the growth rate of these corals is just 35 microns a year. This has important environmental implications, since if a coral colony is destroyed, itsRecoveryit isextremely slow.
