Scientists in Switzerland, Sweden, Britain and China have unraveled the mystery of the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record, which Charles Darwin called the “hideous” secret of evolution. This is reported in an article published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
According to the new results, flowering plants appeared about a hundred million years ago, in the Jurassic period or earlier, when ferns and gymnosperms were still dominant on Earth. Moreover, the oldest known fossils belonging to them appear several million years later, when the angiosperms began to displace the previously prevailing groups. This discrepancy is due to the fact that up to this point flowering plants were relatively rare, and their transformation into fossils was unlikely.
The scientists' conclusions are based on sophisticated modeling using a large global fossil database based on 700 publications. The data included representatives of many plant groups, including palms, orchids, sunflowers, and peas.
According to the researchers, fossil records that do not include genomic data cannot be used to realistically estimate the time of origin of angiosperms.
