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"200 Million Year Old" Tree Planted At London Park

Naturalist Sir David Attenborough plants a Wollemei Pine at Kew Gardens in London 10 May, 2005. The Wollemi pine, which was discovered in Australia after it was believed to be extinct for two million years, is making its debut in the UK at Kew Botanical Gardens and at Kew's sister garden at Wakehurst Place in Sussex. AFP photo by Carl De Souza.
London (AFP) May 10, 2005
A "Jurassic" tree dating from the dinosaur age and long thought to have been extinct for 200 million years was planted Tuesday at a park in London by British wildlife expert Sir David Attenborough.

One of the rarest trees in the world, the Wollemi Pine was found in Australia by a national parks officer, David Noble, in 1994.

The discovery astonished botanists worldwide who had thought the tree died out millions of years ago.

"How marvellous and exciting that we should have discovered this rare survivor from such an ancient past," Attenborough said as the tree went on public display at Kew Gardens.

"It is romantic, I think, that something has survived 200 million years unchanged," he said.

Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at Kew, was one of the people allowed to see the tree in its natural habitat in Australia's Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

"In botanic terms, it is like a zoologist going out and finding a live dinosaur somewhere, a Tyrannosaurus Rex," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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