The world's longest tree-ring chronology comprises thousands of oak and pine series from Germany and continuously covers the Holocene back to 12,325 cal BP. A lack of relict wood from the Younger Dryas cold reversal ca. 12,900–11,700 cal BP, however, challenges the extension of this absolutely dated ring width record further back in time. Here, we combine 646 high-resolution stable oxygen isotope and 795 radiocarbon measurements from subfossil pines that grew during the Younger Dryas at three different sites near Zurich, Switzerland, to extend the record. Coherency of the oxygen isotope variations secures internal crossdating, and radiocarbon wiggle-matching places the final 425-year-long ring-width chronology between 12,716 and 12,292 cal BP with an uncertainty of ±8 years. Our study describes an important step towards annual dating precision further into the Late Glacial period.
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20 February 2025
Multi-Proxy Tree-Ring Dating during the Younger Dryas
Frederick Reinig,
Adam Sookdeo,
Jan Esper,
Kerstin Treydte,
Lukas Wacker,
Giulia Guidobaldi,
Daniel Nievergelt,
Matthias Saurer,
Michael Friedrich,
Gerhard Helle,
Bernd Kromer,
Maren Pauly,
Willy Tegel,
Anne Verstege,
Ulf Büntgen
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Tree-Ring Research
Vol. 81 • No. 1
January 2025
Vol. 81 • No. 1
January 2025
AMS dating
crossdating
European tree-ring chronology
late glacial
radiocarbon
stable oxygen isotopes
wiggle-matching
