Flowering plants may be older than previously thought

Washington, March 16 (ANI): A new analysis of the plant family tree has determined that flowering plants may be considerably older than previously thought.

Previous studies suggest that flowering plants, or angiosperms, first arose 140 to 190 million years ago.

Now, a new research pushes back the age of angiosperms to 215 million years ago, some 25 to 75 million years earlier than either the fossil record or previous molecular studies suggest.

"If you just looked at the fossil record, you would say that angiosperms originated in the early Cretaceous or late Jurassic," said Michael Donoghue of Yale University.

"Most molecular divergence times have shown that they might be older than that," added Yale biologist Jeremy Beaulieu.

"But we actually find that they might be Triassic in origin. No one has found a result like that before," he added.

If confirmed, the study could bolster the idea that early angiosperms promoted the rise of certain insects.

Modern insects like bees and wasps rely on flowers for nectar and pollen.

"The fossil record suggests that a lot of these insect groups originated before angiosperms appeared," said Stephen Smith of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

This study shifts the oldest angiosperms back farther in time towards the origin of groups like bees and flies, according to the scientists.

"If you take our dates and superimpose them on the evolutionary tree for these insect groups, all of a sudden you get a match," said Beaulieu.

To trace the origins of flowering plants, the researchers used genetic comparisons of living plants and clues from fossils to reconstruct the relationships among more than 150 terrestrial plant species.

Though their results contradict previous age estimates for angiosperms, they support estimates for other plant groups.

"Many of the dates that we get correspond really well to the known fossil record, at least for the origin of land plants and the origin of vascular plants and seed plants," said Donoghue.

"But we got a much older date for the origin of angiosperms - one that's really out of whack with the fossil record," Smith added. (ANI)