Fossils Suggest that Flowers May Have Bloomed Before Dinosaurs Existence

Nowadays, you easily shop for flower at your local florist shop and see flower around in the garden. We are really lucky to have florals in our midst today because these lovely plants weren’t always there. According to a report by SWR (Science World Report), flowers were assumed to have been in existence since some billions of years back, however, there was no assurance with respect to the period – until recently. Fossils were recently discovered which suggests that they really evolved one hundred million years sooner than the previous calculation.

The report went on to clarify that the earliest plants with flowers known as angiosperms, were interrelated with seed ferns and conifers. They don’t exist anymore, but the fossil engravings of their pollen grains can be found in rocks. Researchers previously believed that these blooms were the first plants to evolve, even though they were tracked back to one forty million years ago during the early Cretaceous period. At that point, scientists found pollen grains in fossils while inspecting 2 cores from Switzerland.

Progress on flowers’ history

Researchers have found old pollen grains with features that are typically found in flowering plants. The fossils that were 245 million-year-old were discovered in two samples discovered in northern Switzerland and are around a similar age as the earliest known dinosaur in the Middle Triassic period.

A paleobotanist at the Paleontological Institue in University of Zurich, Dr. Peter Hochuli said: ‘Our discoveries suggest that the origin of flowering plants is established a lot further than initially suspected.’

Pollen grains are plentiful and robust, which makes them simpler to spot in the fossil record than delicate flowers and leaves.

The scientists examined the grain’s structure and published their findings in the Frontiers in Plant Science Journal and trust they were pollinated by beetles, as honey bees only evolved about 100 million years later.

Presently, the plot gets thicker as the fossils show that the flowering plants existed 100 million years sooner than envisioned, in spite of the fact that the more extended timeframe may disclose how they came to spread and diversity in the age of the dinosaurs.

In any case, the fossils don’t reveal any more insight into the predecessors of angiosperms, which have confused researchers who are uncertain how they came into existence.

With a CLS (confocal laser scanning) microscope, researchers were able to see the high-resolution pictures of six distinct kinds of pollen. If not for this equipment, they won’t have seen the minute grains and know the specific period of these plants’ existence. Presently, their estimate was that the plants came from two forty million years back when dinosaurs existed on earth. It was likewise reported that since six distinct pollen varieties were uncovered by the scientists, this made them agree that the ancient plants were very diverse.

Six various types of pollen were found in the fossils, implying that ancient blossoms have a wide diversity, while researchers said they have seen comparative grains in the Barents Sea, found north of Scandinavia and also in Switzerland.

In the Middle Triassic, those areas were situated in the subtropics, meanwhile modern Switzerland was a lot drier than the northern part, proposing the plants adjusted to different conditions.

While it’s positively energizing to realize that blossoms were growing during the Turassic period, these plants were no doubt, not the same as the ones we have learned to appreciate.

According to Dr. Hochuli, “Flowers was the final plant group to show up in the history of Earth. They are an incredibly successful group that served as the foundation for every terrestrial ecosystem today, including humankind’s existence.”

Indeed, as indicated by LiveScience, researchers at first guessed that these plants spread quickly after they originally emerged.

While the fossil record of angiosperms goes back 140 million years, this abrupt appearance has pestered researchers as far back as Charles Darwin who was uncertain about their first origin – considering it a ‘terrible puzzle’.

This puzzle is in reality just a riddle for those upheld to evolutionary presuppositions. Proof of diversity of flowers somewhere down in the fossil record is nothing unexpected when the fossil record is seen not as a course of events of the evolution of living things but rather the order of disastrous burial of numerous creatures, to a great extent connected with the global Flood that happened 4,500 years ago. The billions of dead things present in the fossil record were generally buried as different habitats were overpowered by the brutal rising Floodwaters.

While we can’t know the geography of the pre-Flood earth, the diversity and order in the fossil record propose that particular sorts of environments — probably low-lying ones — were wrecked and covered before others. This is a sensible explanation of why most of the plant fossils show up in higher strata, similarly as it clarifies the distribution of vertebrates in higher areas and dominance of marine invertebrates in lower ones.

Flowering plants didn’t have to evolve or evolve with pollinating bugs as most evolutionists assert, as pollinating creatures were made that time. The diversity of the Triassic pollen is likely to mean that florals were present on Earth from the very first time.

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More Answers Needed

The Los Angeles Times made it known that it is still a big challenge to carbon-date plants, especially the delicate ones. Despite the fact that flowering plants were tough enough to make fossilized impressions, the identification of their small, fragile grains is difficult.

A few of the Jurassic’s findings that was publicly announced, was found to be incorrect due to the wrong ages. So, any future interpretations from other Jurassic’s remains are disputable.

While this ongoing finding is definitely encouraging, researchers are still not sure about flowering plants’ origin or what environmental conditions or situations may have pushed them to evolve.

Dr. Hochuli said the immediate angiosperms’ ancestors are unknown.  ‘A few plant groups are alleged to have close relationship. However, the evidence isn’t strong enough and the majority are believed to be too specific to even consider being the basis of the flowering plants,’ he said.