List of longest-living organisms

This is a list of the longest-living biological organisms: the individual(s) (or in some instances, clones) of a species with the longest natural maximum life spans.

Additionally, some organisms maintain the capability to reproduce through very long periods of metabolic dormancy, during which they may not be considered "alive" by certain definitions but nonetheless can resume normal metabolism afterward; it is unclear whether the dormant periods should be counted as part of the organism's lifespan.

There are numerous plants and animals for which the mortality rate has been observed to actually decrease with age, for all or part of the life cycle.

Similarly, the larvae of skin beetles undergo a degree of "reversed development" when starved, and later grow back to the previously attained level of maturity.

[11] Similarly, in May 2022 prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms were found in crystals of halite; these could be over 800 million years old but it remains uncertain if they are alive or if they could be revived.

[18] Similarly, the flowering plant Silene stenophylla was grown from fruit found in an ancient squirrel's cache.

[22] During the 1990s, Raul Cano, a microbiologist at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, US, reported reviving yeast trapped in amber for 25 million years, although doubts were raised as to its antiquity.

[23][24][citation needed] Cano founded a brewery[25] and crafted an "amber ale" with a 45-million-year-old variant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

[28][29][30] In July 2020, marine biologists reported that aerobic microorganisms (mainly), in "quasi-suspended animation", were found in organically poor sediments, which had been dated by previous research using cobalt-based techniques to 4.3 to 101.5 million years old, 68.9 metres (226 feet) below the seafloor in the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) ("the deadest spot in the ocean"), and could be the longest-living life forms ever found,[31][32] yet in October 2024, scientists reported aerobic microorganisms in a 2 billion years old rock drilled from 15 meters underground from a formation known as the Bushveld Igneous Complex in northeastern South Africa, but the age of the microorganisms is unknown.

Some clonal colonies may be fully connected via their root systems, while most are not interconnected but are nonetheless genetically identical clones that populated an area through vegetative reproduction.