Most animals have their own version of tree rings – here’s how we biologists use them to help species thrive

By Anna Sturrock, Senior Lecturer, School of Life Sciences, University of Essex

We have a natural fascination with time – how landscapes have been carved over millennia, how our bodies grow and sag with age, how the stars traverse the sky each night. Scientists probe the layers beneath our feet to understand the secrets of our past. Geologists and palaeontologists sample ice, rock and fossils to reconstruct past climates and species and archaeologists pick through ancient “dustbins” (middens) in excavation sites to reimagine our historical dinner time.

Similarly, most living things produce records of their own existence in layered body tissues – often in the form…

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