This is sort of a 2 part post. First, some of you have seen the page I put together about the Grove of Titans and Atlas Grove redwoods. (Probably a lot more image links than last time you visited). To go with that page, I put a short 2 minute VIDEO on Youtube, just for a moving example. Del Norte Titan included ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=digQPVh1Q44 Second ... Lately, on the redwood titans page (my signature), I added my challenge to Richard Preston's claim in The Wild Trees that Michael Taylor discovered Atlas Grove. The protocol is that a discoverer of a tree may not be the first to have seen the tree, and a discoverer may name a tree. And I believe that Taylor (or Sillett) are on solid ground to name individual trees. My challenge mainly involves Preston's statement about Taylor and Atlas Grove. On page 82 of The Wild Trees, the book presents the discovery in a way that would lead people to think nobody really saw the grove as an entire planting before or recognized any significance. I can't share any photos or the specific details other than... Within the entire Atlas Grove, I located a total of 112 markings or symbols. Among these, is at least one name that I've been able to find a historical reference for. And best I can tell, the grove's existence had to have been known of back near World War II. These do not include current research plot markers - I'm talking very old etchings scratches or marks. The "techno" significance of the grove may not have been realized, such as trunk diameters or age. And I'm guessing that whoever knew about the grove appreciated it and recognized it for grandeur, and was not wrapped up in records, Guinness Book, or a Tall Tree Hunters Club. Anyhow, the more I visit these groves, the more I learn. My big question is "can trees of this size ever occur again?" Because the current titans can't last forever. And can people allow redwoods to regenerate to those dimensions, even if the centuries are provided.
I'd guess local Native American tribes have been using those groves for the last 10,000 years or so. Can trees of this size ever occur again? Yes, but probably not until the human population (both regional and global) is at a substantially lower, environmentally sustainable level.
I've always wondered about what was prior to that too. Their "native American" goes back so far. But when all the continents were the single Pangea, everyone was a native Pangean. And we can probably merely speculate where the redwoods were flourishing, even with a few fossils in hand. With a couple of inches change per year, someday Califonia is going to be where Hawaii is, and Hawaii will belong to the Soviet Union.
Yeah, but back in the days of Pangaea, "everyone" (the common ancestor of all humanity, and all other mammals for that matter) was a small cynodont reptile, or something like that ;-) And even redwoods were still only a cupressaceous ancestor back then.
