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Now, Currey almost certainly didn’t fell the oldest tree ever. And it didn’t seem like it was any particularly special tree.” “But it wasn’t something that I think they struggled with at the time, because it was just a tree, and the mindset was that trees were a renewable resource and they would grow back. “It’s not going to happen again,” says Schoettle. Though members of the scientific community and press were outraged that the tree was killed, Currey’s mistake ultimately provided the impetus to establish Great Basin National Park to protect the bristlecones. The death of the Prometheus tree also helped to change our larger perception of trees as an infinitely replenishing resource. The Prometheus tree’s felling made it doubly symbolic, as the myth of its namesake captures both the human hunger for knowledge and the unintended negative consequences that often result from this desire. The tree Currey felled has been nicknamed the Prometheus tree. Various techniques are used to crossdate wood samples to assure accurate dating. Dendrochronologists demand the assignment of a single calendar year to a single ring. Numerous studies illustrate how ring-counting leads to incorrect conclusions drawn from inaccurate dating. Ring-counting does not ensure the accurate dating of each individual ring. The University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research explains: And it’s more complicated than just counting rings, since each ring doesn’t necessarily correspond to a year. Dendrochronology-the fancy word for tree-ring dating-didn’t come around until the 1890s. It’s also worth noting that figuring out how old a tree is, isn’t that easy. It might be only 2 inches wide, but the pine is still considered a growing, healthy tree.” Pretty soon you’re left with a small strip of bark, which is supporting all of the foliage. “Therefore, the tree can’t support the branches directly above that area, and they die. “Bristlecones will grow a thousand years or so, and then the bark will start dying off on one side,” says Tom Harlan, a researcher at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Collectors Weekly explains how they live so long:Įven if a large portion of a bristlecone is damaged by erosion or fire, small strips of living bark, which Schulman called “life lines,” are able to function and keep the tree alive. Bristlecone pines max out at around 20 feet tall-they’re gnarly, little gnomes of trees, nothing like the majestic Redwoods of California. In the 1950s, this was a shock to people, who always thought that for trees, longevity correlated with size. Great bristlecone pines are some of the longest living trees in the world. The story is a sad one, but there’s a lot of science in there too. Eventually, he realized that the tree he had just felled was almost 5,000 years old – the oldest tree ever recorded. An unwitting park ranger helped him by cutting the tree down, to remove the instrument, and later Currey began to count the rings.

Radiolab told Don Currey’s story in their Oops Episode:īasically, Currey got his tree corer stuck in the tree. It was an accident, and one he didn’t really understand the ramifications of until he started counting rings.

The tree was a Great Basin bristlecone pine, and Currey didn’t meant to kill it. To this day, there has still never been an older tree discovered. ​In 1964, Donal Rusk Currey killed the oldest tree ever.