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New Zealand Tree Stuck In Evolutionary Time Warp

Posted by Soulskill on from the decompress-the-shuttlebay dept.

sciencehabit writes "A eucalyptus-like tree from New Zealand is still waging a battle that should have ended over 500 years ago. The tree continues to sport evolutionary adaptations, such as barbed leaves, to protect it from a large, flightless bird known as a moa. There's just one problem: the moa went extinct around 1500 AD."

1 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Err... 500 years to evolution is nothing by Arimus · · Score: 1, Redundant

    500 years on an evolutionary timescale for slowly evolving speices like trees is bugger all time at all. Come back in a few thousand years please.

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