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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @08:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-the-kind-to-give-your-wife dept.

Botanists have suggested that the extinct Montsechia vidalii is the oldest known flowering plant (angiosperm):

Researchers studied more than 1,000 fossils of the Montsechia Vidalii species as part of the study. The plant resembled a pond-weed but bore fruit containing a single seed - the defining characteristic of a flowering plant. The scientists say it grew in Spanish lakes more than 125 million years ago. "A 'first flower' is technically a myth, like the 'first human'," botanist David Dilcher says in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "But based on this new analysis, we know now that Montsechia is contemporaneous, if not more ancient, than Archaefructus," a similar aquatic plant found in China.

From Los Angeles Times:

Montsechia vidalii, estimated to have lived between 130 million and 125 million years ago, grew during the late Cretaceous, when dinosaurs still walked the earth. It may not have looked much like the flowering plants of today -- in fact, it probably resembled its still-living descendants known as coontails or hornworts, which have coarse leaves ideal for koi ponds.

Unlike modern plants with flowers, M. vidalii woiuldn't have petals or nectar-producing parts, but it did have a single seed -- a telltale characteristic of angiosperms.

"Lower Cretaceous aquatic angiosperms, such as Archaefructus and Montsechia, open the possibility that aquatic plants were locally common at a very early stage of angiosperm evolution and that aquatic habitats may have played a major role in the diversification of some early angiosperm lineages," the study authors wrote.


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