180 million-year-old fossilized fern nearly identical to modern relative
Friday, March 21, 2014 - 09:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org) —A trio of researchers in Sweden has unearthed a fossilized fern that has been dated to 180 million years ago, that remarkably, is in near pristine condition. Benjamin Bomfleur and Stephen McLoughlin, of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Vivi Vajda of Lund University, report in their paper published in the journal Science that they discovered the fossil in a bed of volcanic rock near Korsaröd in Sweden, and found it so well preserved that microscopic analysis revealed that they could make out its DNA structure.