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Mystery of 'living fossil' tree frozen in time for 66 million years finally solved
Live Science ^ | September 15, 2023 | Richard Pallardy

Posted on 09/17/2023 11:05:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv

The Wollemi pine was thought to have gone extinct 2 million years ago... In 1994, hikers discovered a group of strange trees growing in a canyon in Wollemi National Park, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Sydney, Australia. One hiker notified a park service naturalist, who then showed leaf specimens to a botanist. It was ultimately determined they represented an ancient species that had been essentially frozen in time since dinosaurs roamed Earth.

Called a "living fossil" by some, the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) is nearly identical to preserved remains dating to the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). There are now just 60 of these trees in the wild — and these tenacious survivors are threatened by bushfires in the region. It was thought to have gone extinct around 2 million years ago...

The pine has 26 chromosomes — containing a staggering 12.2 billion base pairs. In comparison, humans have only around 3 billion base pairs...

Indeed, the plants do not exchange much genetic material. The remaining trees appear to reproduce mostly by cloning themselves through coppicing — in which suckers emerge from the base and become new trees.

Their rarity may be partly due to the high number of transposons, or "jumping genes" — stretches of DNA that can change their position within the genome. These elements also account for the genome's size...

As transposons leap to new locations, they can change the sequence of "letters" in a DNA molecule, thus causing or reversing mutations in genes. They may carry functional DNA with them or alter DNA at the site of insertion, and thus have a substantial impact on the evolution of an organism.

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: australia; cavernarum; cinnamomi; cretaceous; fossiltree; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; pcinnamomi; phytophthora; rcavernarum; rhaphidospora; teucriumajugaceum; trees; wollemipines
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To: SunkenCiv

There’s some unusual and confusing things out there, with overlap in warm/cold zones, and I’m still figuring it out. It just takes time and research.


41 posted on 09/17/2023 4:07:09 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Fai Mao

Asian Pine Beetles.

Destroyed many forests in Western USA and is the genesis for the fuel in the terrible wildfires seen in the last 20 years.


42 posted on 09/17/2023 4:16:48 PM PDT by Tailback
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To: Tailback

Oh, yeah. Those are all over, not just the Pacific NW. They are a big problems in the South too. I thought they came from Japan? In Alabama would they are called Japanese Pine Beatles. A very destructive insect. Assuming they are the same bug.


43 posted on 09/17/2023 4:26:53 PM PDT by Fai Mao (Starve the beast and steal its food!)
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To: thecodont

Our street was lined with Chestnut Trees and provided a wonderful canopy. The last of them IIRC was killed by an arborist who was “saving them”. That was along time ago..in the mid 1980s.


44 posted on 09/17/2023 4:36:46 PM PDT by Sacajaweau ( )
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To: Fai Mao; thecodont

Yup.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4183048/posts?page=6#6


45 posted on 09/17/2023 4:43:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

It looks a lot like a metasequoia another “ancient” tree.


46 posted on 09/17/2023 4:48:24 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: Tijeras_Slim

https://search.brave.com/search?q=dawn+redwood


47 posted on 09/17/2023 4:49:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

My family owns a nursery in Maryland that has been in business for 95 years. My Grandfather received one of these from a USDA program that got them from pre-war China. Planted in the backyard it was easily 50’ when I was a kid and easy to climb.


48 posted on 09/17/2023 4:58:51 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: Carriage Hill

Back when I was younger and ambitious and living in the local metropolis, I fooled around with gardening, and tried Siberian kiwi (actinidia). It arrived bare root and should have been fine, but it never budded.


49 posted on 09/17/2023 7:41:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Tijeras_Slim

Outside Bessey Hall at MSU there was a tree, offspring of a single living specimen found by a British exploration of the Chinese interior. To keep the species viable, various colleges and whatnot cultivated it all over the world, and MSU has a beautiful campus, thanks to its roots as an ag school.


50 posted on 09/17/2023 7:43:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

Thanks PfSM.


51 posted on 09/17/2023 8:02:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

When I was a kid mu Grandfather gave me a Franklina. When I moved away I wonder what happened to it.


52 posted on 09/17/2023 8:38:38 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: Blood of Tyrants

Okay, I won’t but evolution is a fact.


53 posted on 09/18/2023 12:19:58 AM PDT by muir_redwoods (Freedom isn't free, liberty isn't liberal and you'll never find anything Right on the Left)
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To: SunkenCiv

Both varieties — Actinidia deliciosa and Actinidia arguta — take 3-5yrs — to bud and fruit. I naver had luck with them here in South Central PA, but they do grow nicely in the Baltimore area and south, seems like.

Did yours just not grow at all, after you planted it?


54 posted on 09/18/2023 4:53:08 AM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Carriage Hill

I got bupkis. :^(


55 posted on 09/18/2023 5:45:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

I think it might not have gotten *enough* water on a regular basis, to re-hydrate it. The soil around any plant will suck water from whatever has water, to hydrate itself, and BRs will not do well, unless they get excess water to compensate for that ‘sponge action’ by surrounding soil and plants.

I always plant BR (bare root) plants in a small pot, to get them ‘started’, keep in the shade, and then transplant to the garden after they show good signs of life. Try it again, and be sure to get it in the Spring, as that’s optimum time to plant BR material.


56 posted on 09/18/2023 6:07:39 AM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Carriage Hill

Thx.


57 posted on 09/18/2023 7:02:28 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Verginius Rufus
I never Metasequoia I didn’t like.

You sly dog.

58 posted on 09/18/2023 10:38:39 PM PDT by thecodont
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