A present-day species that has certain characteristics only found elsewhere in extinct groups of organisms. Such species have usually lived in relatively unchanging environments and have evolved very slowly. The maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba) is an example. It was discovered by Western botanists in Japan in the seventeenth century and subsequently in China but only in cultivation. The fossil members of the Ginkgoales were widely distributed in the Mesozoic era. Similarly the dawn redwoods (Metasequoia) were only known from fossil remains until M. glyptostroboides was discovered in a remote part of China in the mid-1940s. See also bradytelic. |
