Flowers Preserved in Amber Reveal Same Blooms Existed 99 million Years ago

Flowers that bloom today were the same ones blooming 99 million years ago – when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. A study published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants examined perfectly preserved globs of amber that suggest certain Flowers in South Africa have remained unchanged over the course of evolution.

The preserved Flowers are almost identical to their modern-day relatives. Their names are eophylica priscatellata and phylica piloburmensis – the same genus as the phylica that are native to South Africa today.

Although ferns and other flowering plants from in the dinosaur era exist today, study authors believe phylica piloburmensis is the first flowering plant to have an identical modern-day relative. Flowers have been difficult to assess over millions of years and are not well represented in fossil records.

That could be because once they bloom they quickly morph into fruit and disintegrate as part of the seed dispersal process.  Spicer wrote in the study that the Flowers also showed evidence of fire adaptation.Here we have preserved in amber all the details of one such early just at the time when plants begin to spread across the globe, and it shows superb adaptation to seasonally dry environments that supports vegetation exposed to frequent wildfires.