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xtremetrees

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Did they cut down the sister to "Methuselah to actually count the rings to verify the great flood the bible talks about. The tree was 5000 years old why did the forest service chop it down?
Here is the oldest tree known to man. Its name is "Methuselah, in the California Mnts. It drinks only 100 gallons of water a year.
 
It was my understanding that a guy had a "drill?" to bore into to count the rings and got it stuck. SO forest service allowed him to cut down to get his couple hundred $$ drill bit back. Way wrong in my book to allow to cut down.
 
One I heard on TV was that the college prof had claim to finding the oldest tree. A student of his found what he thought to be an older tree, and borrowed an inc borer from the univ. when it got stuck, a forest svc officer allowed him to cut down the tree to reclaim the borer.
-Ralph
 
yep yall right.
discovering one to be over 4,000 years old! Needless to say they were excited, and at some point, their only coring tool broke. The end of the field season was nearing. They asked forand I still can't believe it!were granted permission by the U.S. Forest Service to cut the tree down. It was "Prometheus".
After cutting the trunk at a convenient level, which happened to be more than eight feet above the original base, 4,844 rings were counted. This student had just killed the oldest living thing on earth! Eventually, dendrochronologist Don Graybill determined the tree to be 4,862 years of age.
 
xtremetrees said:
After cutting the trunk at a convenient level, which happened to be more than eight feet above the original base, 4,844 rings were counted. This student had just killed the oldest living thing on earth!

That's just wrong.

Not the first wrong thing done in the name of "science", either.

So, did we really learn anything new with this bit of "science"? Will anyone benefit? Has our understanding of tree growth or climate been improved?

No.

All that happened was that some idiot from some university got to put an acheivement on his resumé. "Found the oldest tree on earth!"

Nothing more than a glorified Guiness Book stunt.
 
Never used an increment borer, I presume it to be a hollow boring drill? Kind of like a rock drill for mining test core samples? Anyways couldn't they have pulled it out with some kind of extracting device, like an easy out for broken bolts? They cut it down, is this really true? Wow, did this forester end up scaling logs in Alaska or what?
 
I used dendrochronology this morning. I counted the rings around a branch down to the hollow started one foot back from an old stubbing cut. This isn't a dig at you Clearance, but the same guy that did those stubs probably used spikes. The two often go hand in hand. I hope through this Site maybe we can educate homeowners world wide that even though utilities do what they have to do, residential arborists follow the standard. Sucks about the old tree, but does that really surprise you about the forest service?
 
Thanks Tom, the tree was cut down in 1964!!!!!!!!! Why the snivelling now, history, JFK was barely cold, RFK and MLK were still alive, I thought this happened last week or something. Damn, a little late don't you think, talk about dredging up the past, is there nothing new in tree news this week?
 
Same here X, I was born in '68 as well. The year of 1968, good music, good cars. The year Hunter S. Thompson calls the "Death year", RFK, MLK, Vietnam, a thousand other bad things......Must have been better back then than now, like I said good music (no rap), cool cars (no Jap scrap), the tree huggers, do gooders weren't yet succesfully telling everyone where to get off.
 
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