Cycads were long thought to be “living fossils,” a group that had evolved minimally since the time of the dinosaurs. Now, a well-preserved 80-million-year-old pollen cone discovered in California has provided a new scientific understanding of the plants. The findings are detailed in a paper by paleobotanists, Andres Elgorriaga and Brian Atkins, published in New Phytologist. A lack of fossil cycad evidence and confusion over the years about how to classify some fossil specimens has led to a murky scientific grasp of the plants’ evolutionary history. One prominent idea was that c ..read more

Research from a scientist at Oregon State University has found a long-stemmed fossil flower together with a parasitic wasp encased in 30-million-year-old amber. The study, published in Historical Biology, reports the first description of a fossil flower of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae) encased in Dominican amber, home to some of the world’s clearest fossilized tree resin. The flower, named Plukenetia minima, is the first record of this genus, and the mature female flower is noteworthy for its small size but lengthy stalk, which at the tip has four distinct capsules. The wasp, Hambletonia ..read more

  Above: Reconstruction of the fossil Protocodium Paleontologists have identified a new fossil algae from China, dating back to 541 million years ago (Late Ediacaran Period).  The fossil called Protocodium sinense is the oldest green alga to be preserved in three dimensions, enabling the researchers to investigate its internal structure. The whole fossils and their fine cellular details were preserved in three dimensions due to the replacement of the original organic material with phosphate. This mode of preservation allowed the researchers to use various electron and X ..read more

Check out installment #3 of the Great Moments in Plant Evolution on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's website... this time we are talking about the origin of seeds, gymnosperms, and the Permian extinction ..read more

The first photosynthetic oxygen-producing organisms on Earth were cyanobacteria. Their evolution dramatically changed the Earth allowing oxygen to accumulate into the atmosphere for the first time and further allowing the evolution of oxygen-utilizing organisms including eukaryotes. When, however, did algae begin to occupy marine ecosystems and compete with cyanobacteria as important phototrophic organisms? In a study by Zhang et al. (2021), the molecular remains of ancient algae (so-called biomarkers) are used to show that algae occupied an important role in marine ecosystems in the Mesoprot ..read more

Fossil of a Cretaceous beetle has shed some light on the diet of one of the earliest pollinators of flowering plants. The animal’s remains were unearthed by researchers at the University of Bristol and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) who were able to study its fossil fecal matter, which was composed solely of pollen. Besides being a visitor of flowering plants, researchers now have conclusive evidence that the new fossil named Pelretes vivificus also fed on their pollen. The beetle is associated with clusters of pollen g ..read more

  Installment 2 of the Great Moments in Plant Evolution on the BBG website... this time we are talking about the origin of trees and forests ..read more

Check out my new blog post on the BBG website! It is part 1 of 4 series on the Great Moments in Plant Evolution  ..read more

A research team led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York has uncovered evidence that the transition toward forests as we know them today began earlier than typically believed. While sifting through fossil soils in the Catskill region near Cairo, N.Y., researchers uncovered the extensive root system of 385-million-year old trees that existed during the Middle Devonian Period (Givetian). While seed plants didn’t appear until some 10 million years later, in the Late Devonian, these preserved root systems show evidence of the presence of trees with leaves and wood—bo ..read more

A new study co-led by researchers in China and the United States has pushed back the first-known physical evidence of insect flower pollination to 99 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period (Cenomanian). The revelation is based upon a tumbling flower beetle with pollen on its legs discovered preserved in amber deep inside a mine in northern Myanmar. The fossil is described Nov. 11 in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The fossil, which contains both the beetle and pollen grains, pushes back the earliest documented instance of insect pollination to ..read more