45 million years old perfectly preserved flower in a piece of amber



    This delicate flower was forever preserved in amber. Each petal and even tiny fibers on the petals are perfectly preserved. Scientists believe that this flower bloomed about 45 million years ago. Botanists carried it to the vast treasure of asterids , which also includes potatoes, various types of peppers and a coffee tree.

    Determining the age of an object located in a piece of amber is quite difficult. But scientists George Poinar and Lena Struwe used two methods for determining the age of an object, and they got a fairly wide range - from 45 million to 15 million years. Such a scatter is due to the fact that there are extremely few such fossils, there are no other objects with which you can compare this find and find out the age more accurately. Therefore, scientists went a rather complicated way.



    The researchers decided to find and analyze the species affiliation of other forms of living organisms from the same piece of amber. We are talking about foraminers and coccoliths. The evolution of these organisms has been well studied by scientists, experts can confidently say to which time period this or that species belongs. Initially, it was clear that the flower bloomed long before the appearance of monkeys in the middle of the Tertiary period .



    Struve, a botanist and a specialist in the treasure of asterids, was sure that a new species of flowering plants was discovered. The flower itself is very similar to representatives of the genus Strychnos (family Loganiaceae), which includes about 200 species of plants, many of which are poisonous. "Characteristics used to identify species of the genus Strychnos- The structure of the flower, and we are lucky that we found this fossil, ”says Struve. After the successful identification of the flower’s family, the plant species was called Strychnos electri.



    It cannot be said yet whether Strychnos electri was poisonous, but it can be used to understand what ancient forests were. “Patterns like this help to understand the ecosystem of the distant past. This sample also showed that the Asterid group, which gives a person a lot of things, existed many millions of years ago, ”the scientists say.

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