![]() That’s because “fossilization lows” seem to immediately follow mass extinctions wherein, for one reason or another, not as many organisms wind up locked in stone. “Lazarus taxon” was originally coined for organisms – from a single species up to an entire group – that seem to disappear during one of Earth’s “Big Five” mass extinctions only to pop up again in the fossil record. A genus of ant first found in amber, a midwife toad, and a whole group of marine invertebrates called monoplacophorans fit the bill, too, though the term isn’t restricted to living species. The most famous is the coelacanth – an ancient form of fish thought to have gone extinct over 66 million years ago only to turn up in a South African fish market. There are plenty of other examples of Lazarus taxa. And while the miracle of finding the Metasequoia was one of science, rather than religion, paleontologists Karl Flessa and David Jablonski coined the term Lazarus taxon for organisms that reappear after their presumed extinction. Metasequoia is a Lazarus taxon.įor those who are little shaky on their New Testament stories, Lazarus is the fellow that Jesus is said to have raised from the dead. But there’s another term that definitely applies to discoveries like this. Whether the term fits or not depends on what you think about how much the tree has changed in the last five million years or so. Some called Metasequoia a “ living fossil“. Astonishingly, it was a living species of Metasequoia – the “dawn redwood” that had been named from fossils just a few years before. This sparked a flurry of comparison and discussion among China’s botanists and dendrologists that ultimately arrived at a startling conclusion. The next summer botanist Zhong-Lun Wu was looking through the herbarium collections at the National Central University at Chongqing when Zhan’s mystery cypress caught his eye. ![]() Not wanting to go out on a limb, Zhan classified the tree as Glyptostrobus pensilis?, the question mark a reminder that the species might not be the swamp cypress, after all. The plant’s anatomy resembled that of the Chinese swamp cypress – a tree known for decades – but small details of the leaves, branches, and cones were all wrong. Once he had a chance to fully examine his sample, though, Zhan wasn’t sure what the tree was. With a few snips Zhan collected some branches and cones according to standard botanical protocol and was on his way. ![]() He altered his travel route across Hubei Province to find the mystery tree, and, sure enough, he found it. In the town of Moudao, the principal of Xian Agriculture High School told him, there grew a tree that no one could identify. In July of 1943, while traveling through eastern China, forestry official Zhan Wang heard a tantalizing rumor. But such scenarios are not restricted to the realm of fantasy. In text and on film, they manage to persist in some isolated pocket where extinction spared them. Dinosaurs are choice for such appearances, but pterosaurs and other prehistoric critters do just as well. ![]() An intrepid explorer is walking through the woods when they stumble across an ancient organism not seen for millions of years.
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