Metasequoia heerii
Metasequoia heerii is an extinct redwood species known from fossils across the Northern Hemisphere. It was once thought to be a Sequoia, but after living Metasequoia trees were discovered in China in 1942, scientists reclassified several fossil Sequoia species as Metasequoia, including M. heerii.
The species was first found in Sage Creek, Montana in 1872 by the French paleobotanist Leo Lesquereux. In 1948, Wan-Chun Cheng and Hsen-Hsu Hu renamed Sequoia heerii as Metasequoia heerii.
Like living Metasequoia, M. heerii was deciduous, meaning its leaves fell off in autumn. It had branchlets with opposite leaf arrangements. Leaves were oval to slender, 6–25 mm long and 0.8–1 mm wide, with a distinct mid-vein and a tip ranging from pointed to rounded.
The seed cones were small and near globose to oval, 15–30 mm long and 10–20 mm wide, with triangular scales arranged in a decussate pattern. Seeds had two wings and were about 4–5 mm long and 3 mm wide. Pollen cones were small, 1–4 mm long and 0.5–4 mm wide.
Metasequoia heerii first appeared in the Late Cretaceous and went extinct by the Miocene. During the Tertiary, it lived in cool temperate lowland and swampy forests in the northern Pacific and polar regions. Fossils have been found in western North America and China, with only rare finds in much of Europe.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:18 (CET).