A tree species known only from fossils dating back roughly 90 million years has turned out to be very much alive. In 1994, a New South Wales park ranger rappelled into a narrow sandstone canyon in the Wollemi National Park and stumbled upon a small grove of strange-looking conifers. Botanists soon confirmed something extraordinary: the trees belonged to a species long believed extinct, last appearing in the fossil record around 2 million years ago. Named the Wollemi pine, this living fossil now survives in just one wild canyon, with fewer than a hundred mature trees left on the entire planet, and its precise location remains one of Australia's most carefully guarded conservation secrets.
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