99-million-year-old beetle trapped in amber served as pollinator to evergreen cycads
Thursday, August 16, 2018 - 10:10
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Flowering plants are well known for their special relationship to the insects and other animals that serve as their pollinators. But, before the rise of angiosperms, another group of unusual evergreen gymnosperms, known as cycads, may have been the first insect-pollinated plants. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 16 have uncovered the earliest definitive fossil evidence of that intimate relationship between cycads and insects.