June was a good month for record-
setting science.
　　 A New World's Tallest Tree and Oldest Living Thing were announced, adding to a decade stuffed with[1] extreme science discoveries. Some of nature's world records have changed so fast, in fact, that even the venerable The Guinness Book of Records has been hard put keeping up.
　　Fortunately, there are plenty of other superlative[2] enthusiasts out there keeping score.
　　"Guinness is a wonderful book, but they don't have time to go deep into research," says entomologist Tom Walker of the University of Florida in Gainesville. His ecology students have carefully documented[3] world-record insects in the Book of Insect Records. Their original purpose was to train young scientists, Walker says, but it has also served to satisfy tens of thousands of curious readers worldwide.
　　"We're obsessed," says another BIG[4] scientist, botanist and tallest-tree measurer Steve Sillett of Humboldt State University in Calif. In March the botany professor measured the now-reigning[5] World's Tallest Tree -- a 367.5-foot coast redwood Mendocino Tree, west of Ukiah, Calif. The Mendocino Tree officially takes the record from the once-taller 368-foot Libby Tree of Redwoods National Park, a three-hour drive to the north. The upper 10 feet or so of the Libby Tree died in the 1970s after the tree became a tourist attraction and trampling visitors injured its roots, Sillett says. The dead wood fell away and left a shorter tree.
　　 "Several other widely publicized very tall trees are suffering similar fates," Sillett says. For this reason the Mendocino Tree will remain unmarked, he says, but not uncelebrated. It's already in Guinness's 1999 edition.