Oldest Organism

[belovelife]

http://www.batangastoday.com/oldest-living-thing-giant-seaweed-patches-in-mediterranean-sea-photo/20467/

 

 

 

sea weed

 

is it really this old?

 

this would refute the flood theory for the region

[JMJones0424]

I did a little searching to find the actual report from PLoS ONE:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0030454

 

I am not competent to evaluate their claims, however, it appears the article you linked to latched onto one of three possibilities they mention as to why a genetically identical clonal organism is spread out over such a large distance.

 

Three alternative [to homoplasy] scenarios could account for our observations. The km-scale spread of clones may result from i) clonal growth alone; ii) rhizome fragmentation and dispersal of thousands of shoots across these scales; or iii) a combination of both spread through clonal growth across large distances and range extension through edge dispersal of fragments.

 

The scenario of a km-range spread achieved exclusively through clonal growth requires that the clones reach a minimum age of about 12,500 years. Applying the same estimates to the genets shared between the two pairs of meadows, located 7 km apart between Formentera and Ibiza and 15 km apart around a cape in Formentera (Fig. 3), yields a minimum age estimate between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene. Although there is no biologically compelling reason to exclude this possibility, we consider it to be an unlikely scenario because local sea level changes during the last ice age (from −80,000 to −10,000 years) would place these sampling locations on land (the sea was 100 metres below its present level). The dominance of identical clones on both sides of the island may, therefore, be explained by the occurrence of even older clones that would have been split during glaciation and spread upwards into the newly inundated areas, tracking sea level rise.

Emphasis mine.

 

This is an excellent example of why it is a good practice to follow an article to its source to see if the authors of the study make the claims that the writer of the article reports. In this case, it does not appear to me to be so.

 

On another note, what flood theory are you referring to? I would hope it is not a myth with no scientific evidence.

[belovelife]

i was referring to a theory that i saw on the science channel about the medaterranian being flooded as the straits of jebralta broke during a overwhealming from melting of the glaciers

[JMJones0424]

Perhaps you are referring then to the Zanclean Deluge

The Zanclean flood (also known as "Zanclean Deluge") is a flood theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago, at the beginning of the Zanclean age, between the Miocene and Pliocene, which ended the Messinian salinity crisis. The term was coined by Maria Bianca Cita in 1972 during the Deep Sea Drilling Project study which investigated specifically the transition between the Messinian and Zanclean ages in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean had undergone several cycles of drying out and replenishment of which this was the last occasion before human history.

 

5.33 million years far exceeds the 200,000 years needed for the clonal growth alone to explain the 15km separating the two colonies.

[CraigD]

this would refute the flood theory for the region

No, it wouldn’t.

 

The oldest parts of the Posidonia oceanica colony in the Mediterranean mentioned in the article is believe to be not much more than 200,000 years old.

 

The Zanclean flood of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic is theorized to have occurred about 5,330,000 years ago.

 

Your curiosity and drive to validate theories against one another does you credit, belovelife, but you might want to make better friends with google and wikipedia, to learn the basic data of these these theories before concluding they contradict one another. :naughty:

[belovelife]

the i dea i heard was represented as something that was written in the biblical flood

 

where there may have been a fertile valley, and as the sea waters rose, it flooded the valley,

 

 

 

then they went on to say they wanted to rebuild the straits of jebralta to evacuate the gulf and add more land to the region

 

 

but it was just a theory

[maddog]

the i dea i heard was represented as something that was written in the biblical flood

where there may have been a fertile valley, and as the sea waters rose, it flooded the valley,

then they went on to say they wanted to rebuild the straits of jebralta to evacuate the gulf and add more land to the region

but it was just a theory

If you're going biblical, then I think you are likely talking about the breaking of the

bosporus allowing the Mediterranean into the Black Sea. It is thought this would have

happened about 5400 BCE and would have had the greatest impact on the north

shore of the Black Sea. Were there a Noah, he would have likely been an inhabitant

there. This could make the deluge a "local" and therefor not "global" event. There

are cultures in the world that do not have such a myth. And there are a lot of cultures

in the Levant area that do. This could explain these disconnected myths in different

cultures.

 

None of this would be during when JMJones was referring to. Of course this is Only

if you are talking Biblical myths and all.

 

maddog