Sprecher
Beschreibung
Reconstructing the height of ancient trees is crucial for understanding fossil forests in three dimensions, yet modelling ancient height–diameter relationships remains difficult because the trunks of fossil trees are usually fragmentary and rarely preserve their full height. Building on a previously developed growth modelling framework for ancient araucarian trees, we extend this approach to Pinaceae, the largest living conifer family and an important component of Mesozoic and Cenozoic floras. We compiled height–diameter data for 2,530 living Pinaceae trees representing Abies, Larix, Picea, Pinus, and Pseudotsuga from nine populations in Denmark, Türkiye, China, and Mexico. Twenty nonlinear height–diameter models were evaluated. Initial Akaike Information Criterion comparisons revealed substantial population-specific variation in model support. Twelve models satisfying the screening criteria were subsequently fitted to 100 balanced random samples, from which ten median models were retained for detailed evaluation using RSS, RSD, RSE, RMSE, and AIC. Across the nine equally weighted populations, the median Logistic model showed the best overall composite performance and was therefore selected as the generalized family-level model for Pinaceae. This model was applied to 26 standing Miocene pinaceous trunks from Lesvos, Greece, and yielded heights between 22.2 and 25.3 m, with a mean of 25.3 m. Our results provide a robust empirical framework for reconstructing the stature of ancient Pinaceae trees and highlight the value of generating height–diameter models for living analogs for extrapolation to fossil trees.