h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Wollemia nobilis, the Wollemi Pine - A87789163
Author: Alun - U14483889

Indeed; thanks Willem, and Alun for writing this

GB

OK I'm glad everyone seems to like the piccie! Just could you folks tell me where I can send the picture so you can use it for the entry?

Please send the pic to: artists(at)h2g2(dot)com

Remember to mention the A-number of the Entry (A87789163) so they know which Entry to attach it to

Thanks Willem

OK,Willem,also include your user number so that it shows in the picture credit. That is your U number in Brunel above your Personal Space.

Right, I just mailed it.

Alun, you still need help with the evolutionary history stuff?

Help would be appreciated. Do I add your number to the researcher list for editors?

If you add Willem's number to the list of authors, it will give you and him equal billing, with him listed first as main author (since he joined the site first), so don't do that.

Just put a note at the end "Additional Research by Willem U168712" and the sub-editor will later turn it into a proper Credit.

All right, some notes on the evolutionary history of the Wollemi Pine.

First: it is the family Araucariaciae that goes back to about 200 million years; certainly not the genus or the species (everything on Wikipedia is not true or accurate). So this species comes from an ancient lineage but is itself not necessarily ancient. For perspective, the period 200 million years ago was the Late Triassic, when the first dinosaurs were already living but had not yet become as big and prevalent as they did in the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

The split between the genus Wollemia and Agathis, the Kauri, its closest relative, could have happened in the Late Cretaceous or Early Cenozoic (the so-called 'Age of Mammals' after the extinction of the dinosaurs). We can't pinpoint it any more clearly than that at present. So best one could say is the genus *might* have existed in the time of the dinosaurs. But similar plants, though not of the exact same genus, did exist back then so the plant is of a *type* similar to what formed vast forests in the time of the dinosaurs. But this is true of Kauri and Monkey Puzzle trees also - they, along with the Wollemi Pine, are the last remnants of this group that was so prominent and diverse in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. But the species and the genera surviving today are different from what existed back then ... evolution is still occurring in them, it's not like they've been perfectly frozen in time, they have been changing and evolving in the meantime.

Wollemia was not known as a genus before its discovery. It was named after the Wollemi National Park where it was discovered. If any good fossils had been known it would have received its name from them ... but let's consider naming conventions. 'Good' fossil specimens, clearly reflecting the morphology (build) of a species, are named and become the establishing fossils for a genus and/or species. But when you have fossils that don't do that, for example the fossil footprints of an animal, or the pollen of a plant, it gets a scientific name, but that name isn't the same as the 'real' genus and species name. So as Alun says, 'Dilwynites' is a name applied to fossil pollen, and may or may not be the same as Wollemia. Although the pollen looks identical to that of Wollemia, without more 'samples' of extinct trees we wouldn't know for sure. Suppose (as is likely) there were in the time of the dinosaurs not just three but thirty or fifty or more genera of the Araucaria family ... many might have been very similar to Wollemi Pines in some ways and yet they might also have been very different in other ways ... the fossil record of trees don't give us complete plants, but isolated bits: leaves, cones or cone scales, bark or imprints of bark, pollen grains ... and we can't (yet!) put them together to exactly know what they were like in real life. We can at best say that *similar* trees existed in the Late and perhaps even Early Cretaceous.

The stat about the 'species' having been extinct for 2 million years prior to being 'rediscovered' also refers to Dilwynites from New Zealand ... so if Dilwynites *is not* indeed the same as Wollemia then this isn't true.

So basically we need to put in a bunch of words like 'might', 'maybe', 'could', 'sort of', 'similar' and so on.

I'll see when I can do a bit more research but the bottom line is right now there is not any exact information.

I've updated the section on the past of the tree to make it a bit more uncertain and added the credit for Willem.

Hi again Alun, no need to give me credit for research, I've not really done a thing! Just trying to clarify a bit here and there. But anyways I think you could rephrase the beginning of your article.

How about:

"The Wollemi Pine was one of the major botanical discoveries of the twentieth century. Upon its discovery in 1994 it was found to belong to the Araucaria family, but quite distinct from the two other known living genera [Agathis and Araucaria]. Its pollen closely resembles that of a species that has apparently gone extinct two million years ago; similar kinds are known dating back to the Cretaceous. This species is therefore a remnant of an ancient flora."

And then the later paragraph ('The long-term past and short-term future of Wollemi pines) I think you should replace 'species' with 'genus'. The origin of the GENUS might be between 40 and 100 million years ago, but the species itself is very probably much younger.

Hey where's everybody? Alun? We could wrap this up so it could go into the Guide!

I'm still here Willem.

That's good to know Lanza. Anyone else?

Love the tone of this. Just enough touch of humour to be delightful. The history was interesting, but I found the conservation aspects really compelling. Making it clear where you can see them in captivity or buy one is inspired.

Now I must go to Kew again soon too.

And, of course, great picture, Willem.

I really enjoyed this. A fascinating subject, and the writing did it justice. Nice one!

Apologies to all concerned here.

This Entry was selected to go to the sub editors on April 1st. Unfortunately there was a glitch in the system and the original copy seems to have remained here. Nor was the automatic message generated to advise Alun that his work had been selected.


So, congratulations! Thanks everyone for your involvement. We hope to have this Approved asap.


Lanzababy on behalf of the GEs

I've manually removed this from Peer Review, the peer review conversation is attached to the bottom of the entry itself.

Hope to see this on the Front page very soon.

Lanzababy