Prometheus: World’s Oldest Tree Older Than The Pyramids Of Giza b4in.org/dERD On a craggy, windswept peak in a lonely Nevada wilderness stands a grove of old-growth trees. Gnarled and twisted, shaped by the weather and whirling winds into erratic growth forms, their roots have clung to the pebble-strewn mountainside for literally millennia. On the far side of the Earth, the great pyramids were erected in Egypt and Homer wrote his epic tales, the ancient Roman Empire rose and fell, and humans built the North American cities, roads and railways of today – all in the lifespan of these trees. Photo: Prometheus, a bristlecone pine like this one, lived for 5,000 years on a Nevada mountaintop. Today, Prometheus — the oldest indivdiual ever known to have lived — resides in the UA Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research Credit: University of Arizona This is not just any old-growth grove. These are members of the species Pinus longaeva, or Bristlecone pine, the world’s longest-living individual trees. “There is an argument that unless there’s an extremely stressful period of time or they’re struck by lightning or killed by fire, there’s not a physiological reason for these trees to die,” said Rex Adams, senior research specialist at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. The lab houses pieces of the oldest Bristlecone pine ever known to have lived, a tree called Prometheus after the Titan of Greek mythology. But how the pieces came there is a tragic tale. In the summers of 1963 and 1964, Donald Currey, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, climbed Wheeler Peak in Nevada’s Snake Range to where the Bristlecone pines stand in the cold mountain wind. More b4in.org/dERD
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 08:32:15 +0000
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