Prometheus (tree) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Prometheus was the oldest known non-clonal

Clonal colony

A clonal colony or genet is a group of genetically identical individuals that have grown in a given location, all originating vegetatively from a single ancestor. In plants, an individual in such a population is referred to as a ramet...

organism, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) tree growing near the tree line on Wheeler Peak

Wheeler Peak (Nevada)

Wheeler Peak, elevation , a mountain in the Great Basin Desert, is the highest point in Great Basin National Park. The summit is located west of the Utah border...

in eastern Nevada

Nevada

Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The tree, which was at least 4862 years old and possibly more than 5000 years, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and United States Forest Service

United States Forest Service

The United States Forest Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass...

personnel for research purposes. The people involved did not know of its world-record age before the cutting (see below). However, the circumstances and decision-making process leading to the felling of the tree remain controversial; not all of the basic facts are agreed upon by all involved. The name of the tree refers to the mythological figure Prometheus

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...

, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. The designation WPN-114 was given by the original researcher, Donald Rusk Currey

Donald Rusk Currey

Donald Rusk Currey, Ph.D. was an American professor of geography. While known in academia for his extensive research and exploration of relics of the ancient Lake Bonneville in the eastern Great Basin, he was best known to the public for his controversial felling of Prometheus, the oldest living...

, and refers to the 114th tree sampled by him for his research in Nevada's White Pine County

White Pine County, Nevada

White Pine County is a county located in the U.S. state of Nevada. Its population at the 2010 census was 10,030. Its county seat is Ely. It is the home of Great Basin National Park...

About the tree

Prometheus was a living member of a population of bristlecone pine

Bristlecone pine

The bristlecone pines are a small group of pine trees that are thought to reach an age far greater than that of any other single living organism known, up to nearly 5,000 years....

trees growing near the tree line on the lateral moraine of a former glacier

Glacier

A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

on Wheeler Peak, in Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park is a United States National Park established in 1986, located in east-central Nevada near the Utah border. The park derives its name from the Great Basin, the dry and mountainous region between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Mountains. Topographically, this area is...

, eastern Nevada. Wheeler Peak is the highest mountain in the Snake Range

Snake Range

The Snake Range is a line of high mountains in eastern White Pine County, in east-central Nevada in the western United States. Typical of other ranges in the Basin and Range Province, it runs in a north-south direction, in this case for approximately...

, and the highest mountain entirely within the state of Nevada. The bristlecone pine population on this mountain is divided into at least two distinct sub-populations, one of which is accessible by a popular interpretive trail. Prometheus, however, grew in an area reachable only by off-trail hiking. In either 1958 or 1961, a group of naturalists

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

who admired the grove

Grove (nature)

A grove is a small group of trees with minimal or no undergrowth, such as a sequoia grove, or a small orchard planted for the cultivation of fruits or nuts...

in which the tree grew gave names to a number of the largest or most distinctive trees, including Prometheus.

Currey originally aged the tree at, minimally, 4844 years. A few years later, this was increased to 4862 years by Donald Graybill of the University of Arizona

University of Arizona

The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...

's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research

Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research

The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research was established in 1937 by A.E. Douglass, founder of the modern science of dendrochronology. The LTRR is a research unit in the College of Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona...

. However, these ring counts

Dendrochronology

Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree-rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year...

were done on a trunk cross section taken about 2.5 m (8 feet) above the original germination

Germination

Germination is the process in which a plant or fungus emerges from a seed or spore, respectively, and begins growth. The most common example of germination is the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm. However the growth of a sporeling from a spore, for example the...

point of the tree, because the innermost rings were missing below that point. Adjusting Graybill's figure of 4862 by adding in the estimated number of years required to reach this height, plus a correction for the estimated number of missing rings (which are not uncommon in trees growing at the tree line), it is probable that the tree was at least 5000 years old when felled. This makes it the oldest unitary (i.e. non-clonal) organism ever discovered, exceeding even the Methuselah tree

Methuselah (tree)

Methuselah is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree growing high in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California. Its measured age of 4,842 years makes it the world's oldest known living non-clonal organism...

of the White Mountains

White Mountains (California)

The White Mountains of California are a triangular fault block mountain range facing the Sierra Nevada across the upper Owens Valley. They extend for approximately as a greatly elevated plateau about wide on the south, narrowing to a point at the north, with elevations generally increasing...

' Schulman Grove

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is high in the White Mountains in Inyo County in eastern California. The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees grow between 9,800 and 11,000 feet above sea level, in xeric alpine conditions, protected within the Inyo National Forest...

, in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

by two to three hundred years.

Whether Prometheus should be considered the oldest organism ever known depends on the definition of "oldest" and "organism

Organism

In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...

". Certain sprouting (clonal) organisms, such as creosote bush or aspen

Aspen

Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...

, may have older individuals if the entire clonal organism is considered. Under this standard, the oldest living organism is a grove of quaking aspens

Populus tremuloides

Populus tremuloides is a deciduous tree native to cooler areas of North America, commonly called quaking aspen, trembling aspen, American aspen, and Quakies,. The trees have tall trunks, up to 25 metres, with smooth pale bark, scarred with black. The glossy green leaves, dull beneath, become golden...

in Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

known as Pando

Pando (tree)

Pando is a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen located in the U.S. state of Utah, all determined to be part of a single living organism by identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system, although whether it is a single tree is disputed...

, at perhaps as much as 80,000 years old. However, in a clonal organism the individual clonal stems

Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaves, inflorescence , conifer cones, roots, other stems etc. The internodes distance one node from another...

are nowhere near as old, and no part of the organism at any given point in time is particularly old. Prometheus was thus the oldest non-clonal organism yet discovered, with its innermost, extant rings exceeding 4862 years of age.

The cutting of the tree

In the 1950s dendrochronologists

Dendrochronology

were making active efforts at finding the oldest living tree species, in order to use the analysis of the rings for various research purposes, such as the evaluation of former climates, the dating of archaeological ruins, and addressing the basic scientific question of maximum potential lifespan. Bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of California and elsewhere were discovered by Edward Schulman to be older than any species yet discovered. This spurred interest in finding very old bristlecones, possibly older than the Methuselah tree, aged by Schulman in 1957 at over 4700 years.

Donald R. Currey was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

studying the climate dynamics of the Little Ice Age

Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period . While not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939...

using dendrochronology

Dendrochronology

techniques. In 1963 he became aware of the bristlecone populations in the Snake Range in general, and on Wheeler Peak in particular. Based on the size, growth rate and growth forms of some of the trees he became convinced that some very old specimens existed on the mountain, cored some of them, and found trees exceeding 3,000 years old. However, Currey was not able to obtain a continuous series of overlapping cores from WPN-114. Here, stories diverge. It is not clear whether Currey requested, or Forest Service personnel suggested, that he cut down and section the tree in lieu of being able to core it. There is also some uncertainty as to why a core sample could not be obtained. One version has it that he broke or lodged his only long increment borer and could not obtain another before the end of the field season, another claims he broke two of them, while another implies that a core sample was too difficult to obtain and also would not provide as much definitive information as a full cross section of the tree would.

In addition, there are conflicting views over Prometheus being unique in the Wheeler Peak grove. It is reported that Currey and/or the Forest Service personnel who authorized the cutting believed the tree was just one of many large, very old trees in the grove. Others, at least one of whom was involved in the decision-making and tree cutting, believe that the tree was clearly unique — obviously older than other trees in the area. At least one person involved says that Currey knew this to be true at the time, although there is no known admission from Currey himself that he knew this, and others have disputed that the tree, based on observation alone, was obviously much older than the others.

Another uncertainty is that it is not clear why the felling of such an old tree was necessary given the topic Currey was studying. Since the Little Ice Age

Little Ice Age

started no more than 600 years ago, many trees could presumably have provided the information he was seeking for that time period. However, in Currey's original report in the journal Ecology (Currey, 1965) he refers to the Little Ice Age as encompassing the period from 2000 BC to the present, thus defining the Age over a much longer time period than is currently accepted. Whether this was the common sentiment at the time is not known. In the article, Currey indicates that he sectioned the tree as much from the question of whether the oldest bristlecones were necessarily confined to California's White Mountains (as some dendrochronologists had been claiming) as from its usefulness in regard to studies of the Little Ice Age.

Whatever the rationale, the tree was cut down and sectioned in August 1964, and several pieces of the sections hauled out to be processed and analyzed, first by Currey, then by others in later years. Sections, or pieces of sections have ended up in various places, some of which are publicly accessible, including the Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park

visitor center (Baker, Nevada

Baker, Nevada

Baker, Nevada is a small community and census-designated place in White Pine County, Nevada. It is located from Great Basin National Park on State Route 487. The town is named after an early settler, George W. Baker...

), the Ely Convention Center (Ely, Nevada

Ely, Nevada

Ely is the largest city and county seat of White Pine County, Nevada, United States. Ely was founded as a stagecoach station along the Pony Express and Central Overland Route. Ely's mining boom came later than the other towns along US 50, with the discovery of copper in 1906...

), the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (Tucson, Arizona

Tucson, Arizona

Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...

), and the US Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics (Placerville, California

Placerville, California

Placerville is the county seat of El Dorado County, California. The population was 10,389 at the 2010 census, up from 9,610 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...

Repercussions

It has been argued that the cutting down of Prometheus was an important factor in the movement to protect bristlecones in general, and the Wheeler Peak groves in particular. There had been a movement to protect the mountain and contiguous areas in a national park before the incident, and 22 years later the area gained national park status.

About the tree

The cutting of the tree

Repercussions

See also