The Laacher See eruption (LSE) in Germany ranks among Europe's largest volcanic events of the Upper Pleistocene. Although tephra deposits of the LSE represent an important isochron for the synchronization of proxy archives at the Late Glacial to Early Holocene transition, uncertainty in the age of the eruption has prevailed. Here we present dendrochronological and radiocarbon measurements of subfossil trees that were buried by pyroclastic deposits that firmly date the LSE to 13,006 ± 9 calibrated years before present (BP; taken as AD 1950), which is more than a century earlier than previously accepted.
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