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AN ANALYSIS OF TRACHEID LENGTH VERSUS AGE IN A 4842-YEAR-OLD BRISTLECONE PINE (PINUS LONGAEVA D.K. BAILEY) CALLED PROMETHEUS by TERESA HALUPNIK Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2008 Copyright © by Teresa Halupnik 2008 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Dr. Howard J. Arnott for his generosity in allowing access to Prometheus and for his beneficial time and energy. Dr. Robert Neill, Dr. John Bacon, Dr. Bernard Frye, and Dr. Doyle Hawkins also have my gratitude for hanging in there with me over the years and offering their valuable advice. My family, Steven, Nick, and Amanda, must be acknowledged for their patience and understanding through the difficult years it took to get to this point. They truly supported me in this quest for an advanced degree and I thank them sincerely. “The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand (Author unknown).” The tree called Prometheus had lived through at least 1,826,250 sunrises. This is my interpretation of a small part of its story. November 21, 2008 iii ABSTRACT AN ANALYSIS OF TRACHEID LENGTH VERSUS AGE IN A 4842-YEAR-OLD BRISTLECONE PINE (PINUS LONGAEVA D.K. BAILEY) CALLED PROMETHEUS Teresa Halupnik, PhD. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2008 Supervising Professor: Howard J. Arnott After Prometheus, an ancient bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva D.K. Bailey) located in the Great Basin National Park, had been cut down, it was determined that the tree had been the oldest living organism at over 5000 years of age. Great Basin bristlecone pines are famous for their longevity, living thousands of years under extreme conditions of temperature and moisture at high altitudes. For the majority of conifer trees, a period of rapid growth in tracheid lengths has been observed from the pith up to ten to forty years of age. Since most pine trees live for an average of 100-300 years, it was hypothesized that, for a tree with the potential to live thousands of years, the juvenile growth phase might be of longer duration than trees that live much shorter lives. Tracheid lengths were measured from century sample points on Prometheus, as well as points near the pith and the year of felling. A juvenile growth phase was identified that lasted at least one hundred years. In addition, an unusually strong decrease in tracheid length at the year -800 was noted and commented upon. Crossdating was successful between Prometheus and iv two local bristlecone tree ring chronologies. Additional observations revealed the presence of many partial rings which reinforces the importance of crossdating Prometheus to bristlecone tree ring chronologies in order to determine its true age. The mean tracheid length data were compared to Salzer and Kipfmueller (1998) reconstructed temperature and moisture episodes. Tracheid lengths decreased during warm periods and increased during cool periods. These results confirmed that warm periods increase the length of the growing season, resulting in the production of shorter tracheids. When the mean widths of one-hundred-year intervals of Prometheus were compared to long-term climatic events, the ring widths were wider during the cooler period, narrower during the warmer period, and the widths spiked during two of the Bond events. This is contrary to the belief that warm periods result in wider rings, therefore it was determined that water stress during the warm period and abundant water availability during the cool period were the likely causes of the variable ring widths. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………….………………………………………… iii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….… iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS…………………………………………………………………….. x LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………….. xiv Chapter Page 1. SUMMARY…….……………………………………………………………………. 1 2. PINUS LONGAEVA, THE GREAT BASIN BRISTLECONE PINE……………. 3 2.1 Overview………………………………………………………………….. 3 2.2 Physical Description of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine…………………………………………………………. 3 2.3 Habitat of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine..…………………………. 5 2.4 History of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine………….……………….. 7 2.5 Crossdating Techniques…...………………………………………….... 8 2.6 Bristlecone Pines and Radiocarbon Dating…………………………... 11 2.7 Taxonomy of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine………………………. 13 2.8 Conservation Status……………………………………………………... 17 3. PROMETHEUS, A 4842-YEAR-OLD BRISTLECONE PINE.…………………. 19 3.1 Overview …………….…………………………………………………… 19 3.2 History of Prometheus ………………….………………………………. 19 3.3 Geographic Location of WPN-114.…………………………………….. 22 3.4 Description of WPN-114…………….…………………………………… 26 3.5 The Great Basin National Park Habitat………………………………… 29 3.6 Prometheus Main Slab and Pith Pieces…………………………….…. 30 4. WOOD ANATOMY…………..…………………………………………………….. 37 vi 4.1 Overview……………………….………………………………………….. 37 4.2 Organization of Wood Tissues.……………….………………………… 37 4.3 Xylem Replication…………..……………………………………………. 39 4.4 Variability in Tracheid Length…………………………………………... 42 5. METHODS…………………………..…………………………………………….… 48 5.1 Overview…...……………………………………………………………… 48 5.2 Crossdating……………………..………………………….…………….. 49 5.2.1 Overlapping Main Slab and Pith Pieces of Prometheus……………………………………………...… 49 5.2.2 Crossdating Prometheus to Additional Trees…………………………………………….…………..… 51 5.3 Tracheid Length Measurements….………………………………….…. 51 5.3.1 Determination of Primary Sampling Sites…………………. 51 5.3.2 Removal of Wood Sample from Prometheus…………………………………………………... 52 5.3.3 Chemical and Mechanical Separation of the Tracheids………………………………...……………. 54 5.3.4 Digital Capture and Measurement of the Tracheids……………………………………………… 54 5.3.5 Preliminary Study for Determining Sample Size………………………………………………….. 55 5.3.6 Study to Determine Consistency of Measurements Along One Ring……………………………. 56 5.3.7 Analyses of Assumptions for the Primary Study Data………………………………………….. 57 5.3.8 Statistical Analyses………………………………………….. 57 5.4 Additional Studies………………………………………………………… 57 6. RESULTS………………………………………………………………………….... 59 6.1 Overview…..………………………………………………………………. 59 6.2 Crossdating Results………………………………………………..…….. 59 vii 6.2.1 Overlapping Main Slab and Pith Piece of Prometheus…………………………………….…… 59 6.2.2 Crossdating Prometheus to Local Bristlecone Chronologies and to Buddy………………….… 59 6.3 Tracheid Length Measurements………………………….…………….. 60 6.3.1 Preliminary Study for Determining Sample Size…………………………………………………… 60 6.3.2 Study to Determine Consistency of Measurements Along One Ring…………………………….. 62 6.3.3 Tracheid Length Measurements From Prometheus…………………………………………………… 63 6.4 Complimentary environmental studies…………………………………. 71 7. DISCUSSION….…………………………………………………………………….. 74 7.1 Overview……………...…………………………………………………… 74 7.2 Evaluating Methods..………………………………………………….….. 74 7.2.1 Measuring the Width of Rings…………………………….…. 74 7.2.2 Separating Tracheids for Measurement…………………..… 76 7.2.3 Measuring Tracheids……………………………………….… 77 7.3 Evaluation of Results…………………………………………………….. 80 7.3.1 Crossdating………………………………………………….… 80 7.3.2 Tracheid Length Variation…………………………………… 82 7.4 Complimentary environmental studies…………………………………. 90 8. CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………... 96 8.1 Methods………………………………………………………………….… 96 8.2 Cross Dating……………………………………………………………..… 97 8.3 Tracheid Length…………………………………………………………... 97 8.4 Ring Width…………………………………………………………………. 99 APPENDIX A. CROSSDATE PROGRAM RESULTS………………………………………...…… 100 viii B. TRACHEID LENGTHS (MM)………………………………………………….....…. 107 C. SEPARATED TRACHEIDS ON MICROSCOPE SLIDES……………………….. 123 REFERENCES……………………………………………….………………………………...…. 133 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION………………………..……………………………………… 139 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 2.1 Pinus longaeva characteristics…...…………………………………………………… 4 2.2 Treelines and their connection to altitude, latitude, and temperature of the growing season….………………………………………….. 6 2.3 Relative altitude and temperature for treelines across 9000 years……………….………………………………………………………..…….. 6 2.4 Example skeleton plot used for crossdating trees………….…………………..…… 9 2.5 Two cedar boards from an Egyptian Twelfth Dynasty Sarcophagus……………………………………………………………………………. 10 2.6 Partial rings from Prometheus………………………………………………………… 11 2.7 Radiocarbon age versus age of bristlecone pine trees verified by counting methods………………………………………………………….. 12 2.8 Diagrams of the cross sections of pine needle leaves……………………………… 13 2.9 Cladogram of the Genus Pinus, Subgenus Strobus………………………………… 14 2.10 Recreation of a map drawn by D.K. Bailey in his 1970 division of the Subsection Balfourianae……………………………………………… 16 3.1 Donald Currey standing on a nonliving part of Prometheus, August 6, 1964………………………………………………………….. 20 3.2 Sections of Prometheus wood after felling, August 6, 1964…………………………………………………………………………. 21 3.3 Main slab section of Prometheus displayed at the Bristlecone Convention Center, Ely, Nevada………………………………………… 21 3.4 Main slab section held by the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona…………………………………………………………………………. 21 3.5 Site photographs of where Prometheus was felled, Great Basin National Park, August, 2002….………………………………………… 23 3.6 Dr. Arnott visits the Prometheus site in August, 2003……………………………… 24 3.7 Photographs of the Prometheus wood given to Dr. Howard Arnott by
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    How to See into the Past Look up at the night sky The light you see emerged many years, even millennia, ago and has just traveled close enough to Earth to be visible with the naked eye or a telescope. The nearest optical supernova in two decades, SN 2014J was discovered on January 21, 2014. SN 2014J occurred in the Cigar Galaxy and lies about 12 million light-years away. When this blast oc- curred, geologically speaking Earth was in the Miocene Epoch. Count the rings on a tree Dendrochronology is the study of growth rings, which scientists can use to date temperate zone trees. In contrast, tropical trees lack the dramat- ic seasonal changes that produces periods of rapid growth and dor- mancy that result in growth rings. In 1964 Donald Currey, a graduate student in the geography department at the University of North Caro- lina, unintentionally cut down the oldest living organism on the planet. In what became known as the “Prometheus Story,” Currey’s core sample tool became lodged in bristlecone pine and the park officials advised him to simply cut down the tree, rather than lose the tool and waste this research opportunity. The tree Currey cut down became known as Prometheus, which was estimated to be 4,900 years old. Currently the old- est known living tree, about 4,600 years old, is in the White Mountains of California; there are likely even older bristlecones that have not been dated. Look at the desert landscape Movement and changes in the earth’s geology are apparent in the striated layers of rock and dirt, especially visible in the desert’s barren landscape.