Prof. Dr. Ulrich Heimhofer, Institute of Earth System Sciences, and a joint team from Leibniz Universität Hannover and the University of Bonn have revised the earliest appearance of flowering plants in the geological past. It was previously assumed that the so-called eudicotyledons first appeared around 121 million years ago. However, new findings show that they existed at least two million years earlier. This discovery was made as part of the project ‘Palynological investigations into the earliest phase of angiosperm evolution’, funded by the German Research Foundation.
Together with Dr. Julia Gravendyck, Institute of Organismic Biology, Mr. Heimhofer was able to identify the oldest pollen produced by dicotyledonous flowering plants to date in rock sequences from Portugal. The findings were analysed using fluorescence signals and laser scanning microscopy and provided new insights into the earliest evolutionary history and diversification of angiosperms.
The results indicate that early angiosperms were more widespread in the mid-latitudes. Overall, the study provides new insights into the origin and diversification of flowering plants and was published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)’.
- Find more in the press relaese: Flowers have been blooming on earth for 123 million years
