King Clone is known as not only having the coolest name ever, but as being one of the oldest known living organisms on the planet. The creosote bush ring in the Mojave Desert is estimated to be 11,700 years old. The plant is located 0.6 miles North of California route 27 on Bessemer Mine Road near the towns of Lucerne Valley and Landers.
King Clone was identified as being 11,700 years old by Frank Vasek - a professor at the University of Riverside California. After Vasek hypothesized that the ring was one living organism, he found that the plants around the ring all had identical characteristics that differed from other plant clusters.
Vasek used two methods to guess the plants age. His first method, was to count the rings in the planet and measured the annual growth. The next, he used radiocarbon dating on chucks of wood found at the center of the ring. To his amazement, the dates he came up with for both methods were the exact same.