The Discovery of the Wollemi Pine

The Wollemi pine was a critically endangered species when it was discovered by Dave Noble in 1994, and its exact location in the Wollemi National Park remains a closely guarded secret. The botanist Carrick Chambers stated that the discovery was: ‘the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur alive on earth’. The Wollemi pine evolved around 140 million years ago, when Australia was part of a super continent called Gondwana, which linked Australia, New Guinea and Antarctica. The arrival of the Wollemi pine coincided with the first flowering plants, and the extinction of the dinosaurs.