My bad-- did a little more research-- pines and spruce, not oaks-- and it so happens that they used radio-carbon, not tree rings, to find the age of this so-called oldest tree-- radio-carbon and other such dating techniques are a flawed concept because you never can tell if the material started with the amount in it that you think it did. Bristlecone pines with around 5000 rings are the oldest trees I know of.

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