Extreme longevity!!!

Extreme longevity in proteinaceous deep-sea corals. 
Roark EB, Guilderson TP, Dunbar RB, Fallon SJ, Mucciarone DA.
Deep-sea corals are found on hard substrates on seamounts and continental margins worldwide at depths of 300 to approximately 3,000 m. Deep-sea coral communities are hotspots of deep ocean biomass and biodiversity, providing critical habitat for fish and invertebrates. Newly applied radiocarbon age dates from the deep water proteinaceous corals Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. show that radial growth rates are as low as 4 to 35 mum year(-1) and that individual colony longevities are on the order of thousands of years. The longest-lived Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. specimens were 2,742 years and 4,265 years, respectively. The management and conservation of deep-sea coral communities is challenged by their commercial harvest for the jewelry trade and damage caused by deep-water fishing practices. In light of their unusual longevity, a better understanding of deep-sea coral ecology and their interrelationships with associated benthic communities is needed to inform coherent international conservation strategies for these important deep-sea habitat-forming species.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Mar 31;106(13):5204-8. Epub 2009 Mar 23.

Why is this cool?

 Do you know how old I am? I am 29 years old and, on the infinite countertop of evolutionary time, I am a fleck of dust. My existence no more registers to it than the bacteria on your eyebrows registers to you. Were an organism to live a really long time, then it could be privy to the time tested secrets of evolution!! Imagine that a sentient redwood would be able to see change. Serious change. Not a nickels and dimes, dollars. Bank vaults of dollars!
 What did the researchers do? They did some radiocarbon dating and determined the age of living coral reefs! They found that the "longest-lived Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. specimens were 2,742 years and 4,265 years, respectively." 

 Do you know what radiocarbon dating is? Let me explain. We are carbon-based lifeforms, but all carbon is not equal. The carbon that composes most of our body, clothes, general stuff is carbon-12. There also exists carbon-13 which is stable, but does not occur in large amounts. The interesting one is carbon-14 which decays at a specific rate and occurs in a fixed ratio in everything carbon. I am getting outside of my knowledge base here, so you should check the exact details yourself. What makes does it mean to say that carbon-14 decays? And what is the difference between carbons-12,13, and 14? The difference is a neutron. Carbon-12 has six neutrons, while 13 and 14 have 7 and 8, respectively. Carbon-14 decay means that the nucleus cannot support that number of neutrons for whatever reason and it becomes carbon-13 by ejecting a neutron. Since the ratio between the various carbons is known, researchers can figure out how old a carbon thing is by seeing how much carbon-14 has decayed.
 So, these coral have been shown to live for thousands of years! I don't think there is any medical use that can come from this discovery, just because the organisms are so completely different. I do think that it tells us just how amazing the world is!
These insignificant bacteria were on the bottom of the ocean when Kang the Conqueror was defeated by the Fantastic Four in ancient Egypt!

Those coral were filter feeding without knowing that Iron Man and Dr. Doom were battling in Camelot!

As those same exact corals flapped with each current, Dracula became the Lord of the Vampires!!

More importantly, could those corals recognize the importance of Storm taking control of the Morlocks?!?!