How to kill the world's oldest tree quickly and easily

Prometheus was the oldest known tree until 1964. It began to grown in the bronze age and it managed to survive everything since then until some young researcher came around who studied climate changes.

He couldn't determine the age of the tree with his borer, so he told the forest service to cut it down. They did and he was able to study the age of the tree easily by looking at the stump:

Pity the Little Ice Age he wanted to study began only 600 years ago, so choosing such an old tree was a slight overshot. Sic itur gloria mundi.