THE DAILY MAIL - The oldest living organism in California is not a dinosaur or one of its iconic redwoods - it's a small oak shrub that survived the most recent Ice Age.
Despite its resilience, the Jurupa Oak is now in danger of going the way of the Dodo, due to devastating wildfires and a 900-acre development now being considered.
The plan, titled the Rio Vista Specific, would put more than 1,600 new housing units smack dab in the Jurupa's natural habitat.
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'The main thing that strikes me is that we're literally looking at a bit of what the world was like in the ice age,' UC Riverside scientist Andrew Sanders said of the unassuming shrub in an interview with ABC 7 in 2009, when he and other scientists first calculated the tree's impressive lineage.
'We don't have to look at a fossil in this case, [but] we can see the living individuals.'