The wollemi pines are in a remote gorge about 100 miles northwest of Sydney REUTERSA covert operation has saved the world’s only known natural grove of Jurassic-era pine trees from Australia’s wildfires. Scientists feared that Wollemi pines, about 100 miles northwest of Sydney, would be destroyed by the Gospers Mountain fire, one of 100 still burning, which has destroyed nearly 2,000 square miles of forest. The trees were thought to have disappeared around 40 million years ago and their existence was only known about through fossil records, until the species was discovered in 1994 in a remote sandstone gorge. The oldest fossil of the wollemi tree is around 200 million years old. Most of the surviving natural cluster of trees, thought to be up to 100,000 years old, have emerged unscathed after desperate efforts by firefighters on the ground…

Source: The Times January 15, 2020 17:03 UTC