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Article: Fossils Provide Clues to Evolution of Flowers.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- June 1, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Daffodils, tulips, roses, and other flowers are so much a part of our daily lives that we take them for granted. To evolutionary scientists, though, the question of how and when flowering plants appeared on Earth has gone unanswered for more than a century.
Mosses were the first plants to emerge on land around 425,000,000 years ago, followed by firs, ginkgoes, conifers, and several other varieties. According to the fossil record, flowering plants abruptly appeared out of nowhere about 130,000,000 years ago. Where did they come from, and how could they have evolved so suddenly without any transitional fossils linking them to other ancient plant species?
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