A recent study has shown that plants with flowers they appeared much earlier than previously believed. Its appearance is situated in the Triassic, more than 250 million years ago.
This is an astonishing discovery, as flowering plants have been shown to appear 100 million years earlier than previously believed.
Flowering plants evolved from the plants we know today as conifers, seeded ferns, cycads, or even the Ginkgo, a genus of which only the species remains. Ginkgo bilobabut that in the Triassic period it had numerous species.
Flowers are an adaptation that developed as various animals, including insects, appeared and evolved. The evolution of flowering plants and animals occurs almost in the same period of timesince plants need pollinating insects to fertilize their seeds and propagate their species, and insects need nectar or pollen, depending on what the flower provides, or even perfume, to survive or to be able to reproduce by finding a mate .
The part of the flower that fossilizes the most easily is pollen, even better than leaves or stems. An unbroken sequence of fossilized pollen began about 140 million years ago, and experts surmised that the flowers first appeared on Earth at that time, during the Early Cretaceous. After this new discovery, its appearance is situated in the Triassic, more than 250 million years ago.
Many experts have tried before to determine the age of flowering plants through molecular studies. However, it was not until this new study with fossils was made that they have been able to get even closer to the correct age of these plants.
More information – Polygala de Webb: From Morocco to the Iberian Peninsula
Source – The World
