Researchers in China have discovered the oldest known fossil of a flower bud, pushing the evolution of flowers and plants back in history by at least twenty million years.
The researchers named the discovered flower “Florigerminis jurassica”, which is a type of angiosperm, meaning it is a flowering plant.
The origins of angiosperms have long been the subject of a long debate in paleobiology; Flowers are usually too fragile to survive millions of years in the fossil record, so evidence for their evolution is very patchy.
But according to new scientific sources, the discovered flower changes our understanding of “the way dinosaurs celebrate Valentine’s Day,” as the discovery of this flower pushed the development of flowers and plants back in history by at least twenty million years, meaning that the dinosaurs also enjoyed beautiful flowers and their beautiful flowers. And its sweet smell.
“Many ancient plant scientists were surprised by the fossil, because it is so different,” Shen Wang, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, and lead author of a new paper on the discovery, published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London, told Live Science. About what is mentioned in the books… But for me, I’m not surprised.”
Could A Newly Discovered Fossil Be The Answer to Darwin's 'Abominable' Mystery?
Aligning fossil evidence from >164 Mya with genetic data, shows angiosperms evolved tens of millions of years earlier
A Jurassic flower bud from Chinahttps://t.co/G5vODXsHTp pic.twitter.com/UxMNoOjiG4
— MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 (@MU_Peter) January 17, 2022
Scientists previously believed that this flower only existed in the pre-Cretaceous period between 66 and 145 million years ago, but some scholars have argued that this flower (N. dendrostyla) was not complex enough to be considered an angiosperm, while others have argued that it is So complex that it is a non-flowered tusk, ie, ‘ gymnosperms ‘.
“The flower not only includes a leafy twig. It is also physically connected to the fruit and the flower bud. This removes all the mystery: if a single plant can have a flower bud and a ripe fruit, that means there are open flowers in between.”
164 million-year-old plant fossil is the oldest example of a flowering bud https://t.co/SVWwB0GIkt #paleobotany #Florigerminisjurassica
"Until now, fossil evidence has shown that angiosperms did not arise until the Cretaceous period, between 66 million and 145 million years ago, pic.twitter.com/Pqh9QJFrfQ— Silence ✄ Possum (@SilencePossum) January 22, 2022
The researchers hope their new discovery will lead to a rethinking of the origins of flowering plants, and perhaps even instigate Jurassic gymnosperms such as N. dendrostyla in the angiosperm club.
The researchers hope, according to “iflscience”, that their discovery of the new flower, with its branch, leaf scars, flower bud and fruit physically connected to it, may help mitigate the lack of acceptance of the existence of angiosperms before the Cretaceous period, as the researchers confirmed in their paper that “the current theory of evolution of angiosperms. It now needs a review.