100 Million Years: Oldest Evidence Of Reproduction In Flowering Plants Discovered
Friday, January 3, 2014 - 13:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
The oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant – a cluster of 18 tiny flowers from the Cretaceous Period, with one of them in the process of making some new seeds for the next generation - has been found in a 100-million-year old piece of amber. The perfectly-preserved scene, in a now-extinct plant, appears identical to the reproduction process that "angiosperms," or flowering plants still use today. The fossils were discovered from amber mines in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar, known to most as Burma. The newly-described genus and species of flower was named Micropetasos burmensis. read more