In 1941, Chinese botanists collected specimens of the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, growing in the mountains of Sichuan and Hubei Provinces of China. This species had previously only been known from the fossil record, so you can imagine the excitement at the discovery of this ‘living fossil’. However, in Australia in 1994, David Noble, a field officer from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and two companions, on a lonely trek through the wilderness of steep canyons of Wollemi National Park, north-west of Sydney, discovered yet another ‘living fossil’, the tree we now know as the Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis (Wollemia after Wollemi National Park, nobilis after David Noble). Noble’s discovery was not initially met with enthusiasm. In fact, it was dismissed as a garden escape – a conifer from China and Myanmar, Cephalotaxus fortunei – common in parks and gardens of the upper Blue Cephalotaxus fortunei Mountains. However, two determined

Wollemia nobilis botanists, Wyn Jones and Jan Allen, were sure that this was a new – and unique – species. They set about a careful, detailed review and after months of work even the sceptics agreed that this was not only an extraordinary discovery of a new genus and species Wollemia nobilis, but the discovery of yet another living fossil.

The Wollemi Pine bore a remarkable resemblance to fossils of Agathis jurassica (Araucariaceae) which had long been known from the Jurassic Talbragar Fish Beds¸ north-east of Gulgong. Moreover, here at Macquarie University, the fossils have been used for decades for teaching palaeontology and plant evolution. Now, before we get carried away, we should reconsider the term living fossil and remember that the Wollemi Pine is not a fossil, rather a modern day descendent of those ancient trees. Charles Darwin himself first coined the phrase ‘Living Fossil’ when referring to Platypus and Lungfish: “These anomalous forms may almost be called living fossils they have endured to the present day, from having inhabited a confined area, and from having thus been exposed to less severe competition”. 1

What is truly amazing is that the Wollemi Pine remained undiscovered by Europeans for over 200 years in a location within 150 kilometres of Sydney.

There is a young Wollemi Pine in the Jim Rose Earth Sciences Garden (adjacent to Building E5A) planted by palaeontologists Professor John Talent and Professor Ruth Mawson.

1 Charles Darwin 1859 On the Origin of Species page 107.

Kevin Downing, Brian Atwell & Alison Downing, Department of Biological Sciences, July 2013