What is so special about plants in the family Araucariaceae?
The three genera in that family, Agathis, Araucaria and Wollemia, are the only survivals of the trees that grew on Antarctica before the poles were covered with ice, and represent some of the most ancient types of trees in existance. They became extinct in the northern hemisphere at the end of the Cretaceous, along with the dinosaurs, and the survivors in the southern hemisphere probably spread out from Antarctica sometime after that. Most of them are also decorative and commercially valuable trees.
