Ancient Pine Trees

[Steven Burke]

 Hello Gary,
 
 li> The discovery of an ancient strain of pine trees in Australia was 
 li> described in the New York Times of Dec. 15, 1994. The discovery was 
 li> compared to the discovery of a dawn redwood tree in China in 1944.
 li> This  discovery in 1944, was this the only one in the world? Palo Alto

 li> Califoria has a dawn redwood, is this tree a relative to the one found
 li> in China?
 
The ancient pine tree was recently discovered in a canyon in the Blue 
Mountains less than 100 kilometres from Sydney. Apparently there are 
only about 40 individuals including 20 mature trees. The trees are in the
family Araucariacae which has other species elsewhere in Australia, 
New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and South America as far as I am aware of.
I understand that the trees are quite different to living relatives
although
similar to fossilised leaves. The trees will be a new genus. Seedlings of 
the trees are being propogated so they can't all be wiped out in a
bushfire.

Steven.
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