The Wollemi pine was known only from fossils until it was found alive in Australia in 1994.
Why it is true
A park ranger found it in a remote gorge near Sydney. Fewer than a hundred adult trees remain in the wild, at a location kept secret. During the huge fires of 2019 and 2020, firefighters set up sprinklers to save them, and succeeded.
Source: Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
Would you rather be asked first?
This is the reading side of the site, so the answer is in the sentence above — that is the whole point of it. Test yourself works the other way round: the question comes on its own, and the fact and the explanation only appear once you have answered.
Related facts
The Petrified Forest in Arizona has tree trunks more than 200 million years old.
Morning Glory clouds form in Australia and can be up to a thousand kilometres long.
Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor but support twenty-five percent of all marine species.
The sting of the gympie-gympie, an Australian stinging tree, can cause pain for weeks or even months.


