The world's oldest tree is about to be officially recognized.

A giant tree that has survived for thousands of years in a forest in southern Chile is about to be recognized as the world's oldest tree .

The trunk of the Great Grandfather tree has a diameter of 4 meters. (Photo: Reuters).

Named "Great Grandfather," the tree, with a trunk diameter of 4 meters and a height of 28 meters, is believed to contain scientific information that could reveal how Earth adapts to climate change. Dating back over 5,000 years , it is poised to replace Methuselah, a 4,850-year-old bristlecone pine in California, USA, as the oldest tree on the planet , according to Antonio Lara, a researcher at the University of Austria and the Chilean Climate Science Center, and a member of the team that measured the tree's age, Phys.org reported on April 22.

The Great Grandfather sits on the edge of a canyon in a forest in the Los Rios region, 800km south of the capital Santiago. It is a Fitzroya cupressoides , a species of cypress endemic to the southern part of the continent. In recent years, tourists have been hiking for an hour through the forest to take photos next to the tree. Due to its growing popularity, the forestry agency has increased the number of rangers and restricted access to protect the Great Grandfather. Also known as the Patagonian cypress , it is the largest tree in South America . It grows alongside many other species such as coigue, bamboo pine, and tepa. For centuries, its thick trunk has been felled for house construction and shipbuilding.

Forest ranger Anibal Henriquez discovered the tree while patrolling the forest in 1972. His grandson, Jonathan Barichivich, is now one of several scientists studying it. In 2020, Barichivich and Lara obtained a sample from the Great Grandfather using the longest hand drill ever used, but they haven't yet reached the core. They estimated the sample to be 2,400 years old and used predictive modeling to calculate the tree's full age. According to Barichivich, there's an 80% chance the tree is over 5,000 years old. He hopes to publish the research results soon.

This research has attracted considerable attention in the scientific community because dendrochronology, a method of tree ring dating, is less accurate with older trees due to the decaying core of many of them. Very few trees thousands of years old still exist on the planet. Ancient trees have unique genomes and histories because they are symbols of enduring adaptation, according to Carmen Gloria Rodriguez, a research assistant in the tree dating laboratory at the University of Austria. The Great Grandfather is also seen as a time capsule that could reveal the past.