Pinus longaeva in California’s White Mountains

It has been said that the earliest living things on Earth are the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees in California’s Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest within the Inyo National Forest. Martine and I visited the Schulman Grove (Altitude 10,100 feet or 3,078 meters) and its visitor center in 2019.

While there, we hiked along a trail (shown above) where there were numerous Great Basin Bristlecones (Pinus longaeva). Eventually, the altitude started to get to us; so we headed back down.

The most amazing thing we learned of at the visitor center is how scientists have been able, using the comparable annual rings of living and dead Bristlecones found in the same area, to calculate how long the species has been growing in the region. According to research conducted by C. W. Ferguson and D. A. Graybill of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona, they were able to go back as far as 6700 B.C. This is a period of approximately 8,725 years when you add in the 2025 years of the Christian Era..

If you are a Young Earth Creationist who follows the teachings of James Ussher, Bishop of Armagh, who deduced in 1650 that the universe and everything in it was created at Noon on October 23, 4004 B.C., you are out of luck.

For more information, consult Ferguson and Graybill’s paper “Dendrochronology of Bristlecone Pine.”