Ancient Mystery Unraveled: The Secret of the 'Living Fossil' Tree Revealed
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Livescience.com
Scientists have decoded the genome of the Wollemi pine, a "living fossil" tree species that was thought to have gone extinct around 2 million years ago. The genome analysis revealed that the pine has a large genome size with low genetic diversity, likely due to a bottleneck event thousands of years ago. The trees reproduce mainly through cloning themselves, and their rarity may be attributed to the high number of transposons, or "jumping genes," in their genome. The study also shed light on the susceptibility of the Wollemi pine to disease and has important implications for its conservation efforts as there are only 60 trees remaining in the wild, which are threatened by bushfires.