The 1994 discovery of the Wollemi pine: a living fossil found in a hidden Australian canyon

In September 1994, a New South Wales National Parks ranger named David Noble lowered himself on a rope into a narrow sandstone gorge inside Wollemi National Park, about 150 kilometres northwest of Sydney, and walked through a stand of trees whose ancestors had shed pollen over the heads of dinosaurs.

Noble snapped off a small branch, took it home, and a few weeks later botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens confirmed what he had found: a living member of a conifer lineage known almost entirely from fossils, presumed to have died out

Fewer than 100 wild Wollemi pines still exist in a grove whose coordinates the Australian government keeps classified.