Prometheus (tree)

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Tree stump from Prometheus

Prometheus (also WPN-114) is the name of one of the oldest known trees with almost 5000 years. These were a Bristlecone Pine ( Pinus longaeva ) attached to the tree line of Wheeler Peak (Nevada) grew. The age of the tree was only discovered after it was felled in 1964 by a student working for the US Forest Service.

Over the tree

Prometheus was one of many long-lived pines on the lateral moraine of a former glacier on Wheeler Peak . The 3982 m high mountain is now the center of the Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada, founded in 1986 . Prometheus grew up near the tree line in a remote part of the area. Named after Prometheus by journalist David Lambert from 1957 to 1961. Edward Schulman had recognized in other locations that these pines are and probably the oldest living things had already found more than 4,000-year-old specimens, including the by him so named Methuselah (Engl. For Methuselah) in the White Mountains .

Prometheus grew to around 3,200 m above sea level . The tree was around 5.1 m high, the living part around 3.3 m. The trunk circumference at a height of 45 cm was 6.4 m. 92% of the trunk circumference had no bark , this was only preserved in a 50 cm wide strip on the north side. The south, uphill side was partially eroded away to over the center point.

Donald Rusk Currey felled the tree on August 7, 1964 as part of a work in which, among other things, he created a dendrochronology of the area. For the tree he named WPN-114, he determined a number of annual rings and thus a minimum age of 4844 years. It provisionally concluded that it was around 4900 years old. A few years later, Donald Graybill of the University of Arizona corrected the assumed age to 4862 years. However, the annual rings were counted just under two meters above the ground, as the inner rings were no longer visible below. From then and until 2012 it was considered the oldest non- clonally growing organism and with this property surpassed the Methuselah, who was only two or three centuries younger .

In 2012, a drill core sample was evaluated for the first time, which Edward Schulman had taken in the White Mountains of California in the late 1950s. The tree from which the sample was taken is known and alive, the dating showed an age of 5062 years, converted to the year 2012.

Further research

Grove of trees around Prometheus

Donald R. Currey was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied the climatic changes during the Little Ice Age using dendrochronology . In 1963 he became aware of the long-lived pine populations in the Snake Range in what is now the Great Basin National Park. The size, shape and speed of growth of some trees made Currey estimate their age to be over 3000 years. He also took samples from inside the trunks. However, the student did not succeed in examining the WPN-114 in this way. It is not known exactly why. There are various theories as to why Currey eventually felled the tree. It is suspected, among other things, that the drill required for taking samples was damaged and no longer usable. Others believe that taking a specimen was considered to be far less revealing and safe than an accurate dissection from the start.

The parts of the tree brought down from Currey are now stored in several research institutions, such as the Convention Center in Ely, Nevada , the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson and at the Institute of Forest Genetics of the United States Forest Service in Placerville, California. A part is also located in the visitor center of the Great Basin National Park in Baker, Nevada.

Building on the research, the most reliable dendrochronological time series was created with the bristle jaw chronology , which among other things serves as a calibration standard for radiocarbon dating .

Effects

It is believed that the felling of Prometheus fueled conservation efforts for the long-lived pine trees. Even before the incident, some advocated the establishment of a national park around Wheeler Peak. 22 years after the first investigation on Prometheus, the Great Basin National Park was finally established.

The exact position of Methuselah and the currently oldest known living tree, discovered in 2012, is kept secret by the responsible US Forest Service. Due to the importance of the long-lived pine for dendrochronology, the species and all specimens are now under protection.

See also

Commons : Prometheus (tree)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Michael P. Cohen: Oldest living tree Tells all , in: A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the Great Basin . University of Nevada Press, 1998. (online) .
  2. ^ E. Schulman: Bristlecone pine, oldest known living thing . Nat. Geogr. Mag., Volume 113, 1957, pp. 355-372.
  3. ↑ Anna Lewington, Edward Parker: Our Oldest Trees . Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 2005, p. 34, ISBN 3-440-10382-X
  4. ^ A b c Donald R. Currey: An Ancient Bristlecone Pine Stand in Eastern Nevada . Ecology, Volume 46, 1965, pp. 564-566 (online)
  5. ↑ a b The Martyred One , Leonard Miller, The Bristlecone Site.
  6. ↑ Rocky Mountain Tree Ring Research: Database of ancient trees (January 2013)
  7. ^ Carl Hall: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found , San Francisco Chronicle , August 23, 1998

Coordinates: 38 ° 59 ′ 51 ″  N , 114 ° 18 ′ 21.6 ″  W.