Can the morphology of fossil leaves tell us how early flowering plants grew?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - 19:42
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Fossils and their surrounding matrix can provide insights into what our world looked like millions of years ago. Fossils of angiosperms, or flowering plants (which are the most common plants today), first appear in the fossil record about 140 million years ago. Based on the material in which these fossils are deposited, it is thought that early angiosperms must have been weedy, fast-growing shrubs and herbs found in highly disturbed riparian stream channels and crevasses.