Dawn Redwood Tree

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Dawn Redwood trees have a fascinating history. They are a cousin to the great Redwoods and Giant Sequoias that are found on the west coast. But the species was unknown to the most of the world until the middle of the 20th century. For many years, scientists had been studying redwood-like fossils from North America and Asia. In 1941, a Japanese paleobotanist called Shigeru Miki noticed a fossil specimen that was similar to the sequoias but not quite the same. He published an article claiming the discovery of a new fossil genus, naming it metasequoia, meaning "like the sequoia.” The fossils of metasequoia date back 90 million years, to the time of the dinosaurs. But they seemed to disappear from the fossil record about 1.5 million years ago.

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