Lesions from the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica were first found on an American chestnut tree at the Bronx Zoo in 1904. Within 50 years, Castanea dentata, the dominant upland forest tree species from Maine to Mississippi—a tree that had previously survived an asteroid impact and at least 20 glaciations during its 87 million years of evolutionary history (Willis & McElwain 2002)—was functionally eliminated from the eastern deciduous forest ecosystem.
