Every Then & Theory plate comes from a true story, and this card tells the one behind yours.

The Then & Theory team

Before flowers

Ferns and conifers crowd a forest river where an animal stops to drink. For much of the age of dinosaurs, forests had no flowers. Conifers and their relatives were still the dominant plants in the Early Cretaceous. Some of the oldest known flowering plants are about 130 million years old, and by about 95 million years ago flowering plants had become the main vegetation in many parts of the world. That speed puzzled Charles Darwin. In 1879 he wrote to the botanist Joseph Hooker that the rapid rise of the higher plants was “an abominable mystery”.

Note. Pollen resembling that of flowering plants has been found in rocks about 245 million years old, so their origin may be much older. That is debated.

Sources

1. Britannica, “Angiosperm: Paleobotany and evolution”
2. Darwin Correspondence Project, letter to J. D. Hooker, 22 July 1879