It is likely that the Earth's first flowers has been found with a 130-million-year-old fossil that was found over a century ago in Spanish lakes. A study of the prehistoric aquatic plant will now reshape the understanding of scientists when it comes to how the Earth's first flowers looked like.
The details of the Earth's first flowers was published in the August edition of the United States journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported NBC News.
According to the journal, the flowers were called the Monsechia vidalii, a leafy freshwater plant which was likely fed on by dinosaurs such as the brachiosaurs and the iguanodons more than 125 million years ago.
The scientists who analyzed the fossilized specimens reportedly wanted to understand why flowering plants have been so successful. Even Charles Darwin questioned their abilities called "an abominable mystery." However, it had been difficult for the researchers to answer Darwin's question if the appearance of the Earth's first flowers is unknown and how they have changed over the millenia.
"Because it is so ancient and is totally aquatic," the extinct freshwater plant "raises questions centered on the very early evolutionary history of flowering plants," according to the study's authors.
The scientists had to analyse more than 1,000 fossil remains before they discovered the 130-million-year-old fossil of a water-dwelling plant was possibly the Earth's first flowering plant, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Monsechia vidalii reportedly appears rather plain and more like a weed than a flower. It had neither petals nor fragrance, and had no nectar. However, it had a seed, which is a characteristic of angiosperms. Similar to modern flowers, the Monsechia vidalii had its own pollination system of pollination and it had no need for insects since it worked underwater through "water currents in the lakes to disperse their pollen to female flowers."
It was found to have lived during the Cretacious period, the time of the dinosaurs.
"There were not many flowering plants at that time," according to David Dilcher, an Indiana University paleobotanist.
Dilcher said he preferred calling the Earth's first flowers as the "oldest submerged aquatic plant that we have any fossil record of."
Researchers now say that the Montsecia vidalii, the Earth's known first flower, opens the possibility of aquatic plants being locally common during angiosperm evolution. They also said that aquatic environments could have contributed greatly to the diversification of several early angiosperm lineages," according to CBS San Francisco.
Archaeologists think the world's first flowers bloomed underwater https://t.co/qLcwkY7OlC pic.twitter.com/QaCAi3S0C2
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 18, 2015
