Mondo Knows Facts

Tree rings can date timber to the exact year

Dendrochronology matches growth patterns to build calendars stretching back millennia Each year a tree adds a ring whose width records how well it grew, so a sequence of rings forms a fingerprint of good and bad seasons. Andrew Douglass developed the technique in the American Southwest in the early twentieth century. By overlapping sequences, researchers have built chronologies of oak and pine running back more than ten thousand years. It sits in Mondo's history collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

National Park Service

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Tags: dendrochronology, dating, trees

Tree rings can date timber to the exact year: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Dendrochronology matches growth patterns to build calendars stretching back millennia. The figure is taken from National Park Service, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a history fact?
Yes. It sits on the History shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.