Ancient cypress in Chile may be the world’s oldest tree, new study suggests

The tree, in Chile's Alerce Costero national park, is known as the Great-Grandfather and could be more than 5,000 years old

Scientists in Chile believe that a conifer with a four-metre-thick trunk known as the Great-Grandfather could be the world's oldest living tree, beating the current record-holder by more than 600 years.

A new study carried out by Dr Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean scientist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, suggests that the tree, a Patagonian cypress, also known as the alerce milenario, could be up to 5,484 years old.