<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/1429acac-d609-4aaf-8f98-05c8774b8968/33B31060-5EC5-42AE-85E3-65A93AD85F43/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.msnbc.msn.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.msnbc.msn.com/img/F414188C-C01A-419B-A855-DCD9B291DA80" alt="Image: Coral" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/"><P class="textBodyBlack"><SPAN id="byLine"></SPAN>Deep-sea corals are the oldest living animals with a skeleton in the seas, claims new research that found a 4,265-year-old coral species off the coast of Hawaii. </P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/">Previous estimates of the corals' ages, made by counting what were thought to be annual growth rings, put the maximum age for <EM>Gerardia sp.</EM> in Hawaii at about 70 years.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/"><P class="textBodyBlack"><SPAN id="byLine"></SPAN>But radiocarbon studies had pinned ages of about 2,000 to 3,000 years on other Gerardia colonies in the Atlantic and Pacific. Similar dates were found for some Leiopathes specimens. </P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/">the Hawaiian specimens and came up with similarly ancient ages: about 2,742 years for Gerardia and 4,265 years for Leiopathes.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/">These results show that Leiopathes is the oldest skeletal-accreting marine organism known and, to the best of our knowledge, the oldest colonial organism yet found</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29842632/"><P class="textBodyBlack"><SPAN id="byLine"></SPAN>The ages imply that the corals' skeletons grow much more slowly than previously thought, only a few micrometers a year (one micrometer is about the diameter of a human blood cell). </P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/33B31060-5EC5-42AE-85E3-65A93AD85F43/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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