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Flower bud discovered in China may answer Charles Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’

Charles Darwin, the English naturalist famous for his contributions to the evolution of science, had an ‘abominable mystery’ when it came to the evolution of flowering plants. There has been a recent discovery in China of a 130-million-year-old fossilized flower bud that may solve this mystery. This fossil includes a leafy branch, fruit and flower bud, suggesting angiosperms (plants that produce seeds and have flowers) were present in the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago).

Daily Mail reports that the oldest fossil specimen ever discovered was discovered in a deposit dated more than 164 million years ago and could be the transitional period that solves Darwin’s enigma. The abominable mystery of the famed naturalist was first revealed in 1879. Darwin wrote: ‘The rapid development as far as we can judge of all high plants in recent geological times is an abominable mystery. Flowering plants appeared on Earth relatively recently on a geological timescale, then quickly diversified into an explosion of color, shape and form’.

There have been many fossils discovered that could be the answer, but further investigations reveal they were not true angiosperms, the report said. Florigerminis jurassica, a fossilized flower bud, complies with the criteria. Specifically, the ancient plant is described as having woody branches with nodes, an area on the stem where buds are located, physically connected fruit, and a flower bud that ends on the branch. The tepals are densely packed, tightly enclosing the center. ‘Even though over 100 blooming flowers of Nanjinganthus provide evidence of angiosperms in the Jurassic, our current knowledge of early angiosperms remains limited,’ reads the study published in the Special Publications of the Geological Society, London.

Florigerminis is an angiosperm, as evidenced by its physical connection between flower buds and fruit. According to the study, Florigerminis’ fruit is oval in shape, with a convex apex and surrounded by a fleshy mesocarp. These features are different from its flower buds, which are oval in shape, but have a convex apex and are surrounded by layers of tepals. Researchers also noted that if these two parts were preserved separately, it would be difficult to imagine they were from the same plant. The plant tissues of the plants are preserved in a yellowish rock made of volcanic ash that was ejected during an eruption. After the leaves of the plants were removed from the deposit, only their scars remain.

Darwinism and outgroup comparison led scholars to believe that well-differentiated perianths were not expected in pioneer angiosperms, but that reasoning has since been challenged by the discovery of well-differentiated perianth in Jurassic Euanthus [discovered in 2016] and Nanjinganthus [discovered in 2018], according to the study. Both Jurrassic Euanthus and Nanjinganthus share similar characteristics with modern flowering plants, but many experts argue that they are not true angiosperms. The study argues that occurrences of flowers from Jurassic times, such as Florigerminis, Euanthus and Nanjinganthus, suggest that the angiosperm evolution theory lacks predictability.

 

 

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