05/20/2026
Fascinating! I like to look at tree rings but this tree takes the cake.
On some of the older growth trees around southern Ohio I often see evidence from the Shawnee region forest fire that took place when I was in grade school during the early 1970’s. I’ll never forget the heavy smoke in my neighborhood.
I also consistently see evidence of the 1988 drought in tree rings. I was about to graduate from forestry school and vividly remember where I was when it finally rained. The lack of rainfall also halted barge traffic was affected on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The oldest log I’ve ever counted rings on was in about 1995 when I had a veneer grade white oak log harvested out of West Virginia that was 440+ years old. It dated back into the 1500’s.
In 2019, workers excavating land for a geothermal power plant near Ngāwhā, New Zealand uncovered a giant kauri tree buried nearly 30 feet underground.
The tree was enormous, stretching almost 65 feet long and more than 8 feet wide. Scientists later discovered it had lived through the Laschamp Excursion around 42,000 years ago, a period when Earth’s magnetic field weakened dramatically and cosmic radiation flooded the planet.
Locked inside its 1,600 growth rings was a year by year record of that event. Researchers believe the tree may preserve evidence of intense solar storms, atmospheric upheaval, expanding ice sheets, violent weather shifts, and a world experiencing extreme environmental stress.
Some scientists even suggest this period may have contributed to widespread megafauna extinctions and the collapse of Neanderthal populations.
For over 42,000 years, the tree remained buried in silence, preserving what may be one of the most detailed natural records of an ancient global catastrophe ever discovered.
