2000MNRAS.313L..23P

We report the serendipitous discovery of a population of low-mass, pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars in the direction of the Wolf-Rayet/O-star binary system γ²Vel and the Vela OB2 association. We argue that γ²Vel and the low-mass stars are truly associated and approximately coeval, and that both are at distances between 360 and 490pc, disagreeing at the 2σ level with the recent Hipparcos parallax of γ²Vel, but consistent with older distance estimates. Our results clearly have implications for the physical parameters of the γ²Vel system, but also offer an exciting opportunity to investigate the influence of high-mass stars on the mass function and circumstellar disc lifetimes of their lower mass PMS siblings.