Mountain Seer: The World's Oldest Living Things (Video) *Rachel Sussman's worldwide quest*

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The World's Oldest Living Things (Video) Rachel Sussman's worldwide quest

▲▲▲

Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California

These trees are remarkable for their great age and their ability to survive adverse growing conditions

The World's Oldest Living Things

Rachel Sussman introduces us to the world's oldest continuously living organisms. For the past 5 years Sussman has been researching, working with biologists, and traveling all over the world to to find continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older.

(TED Talks) Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world's oldest continuously living organisms -- from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago's coast to an "underground forest" in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture.

About Rachel Sussman

(TED Talks) For the past five years, Rachel Sussman has traveled around the globe photographing organisms that have lived for more than 2,000 years. From 500,000-year-old actinobacteria in the Siberian permafrost a lone spruce standing on a mostly barren mountain in Sweden, her images capture both the robustness and fragility of life. While these organisms' longevity dwarfs even that of human civilization, they all depend on ecosystems in fine balance -- a balance thrown into question by human encroachment and climate change. Sussman's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe in venues including the Museum of Natural History. "The collection offers a rare perspective of life on Earth. Some of the organisms Sussman has captured look alien. Many were alive in the bronze age. Others were eking out an existence long before modern humans rose up and migrated out of Africa." (The Guardian)

Links
Rachel Sussman Photography Rachel Sussman
TED Talks "Ideas Worth Spreading" TED
Bristlecone Pine Wikipedia NPS