Chinese and American scholars discover a new type of plant "living fossils"

Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, July 13 (Reporter Wang Wei) reporter 13 from China
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology was informed that Chinese and American palaeontologists recently found a new type of plant "living fossils": spiked flower fir. These plants date back at least 160 million years to the Jurassic period, and there has been no significant change in morphology, which is important for humans to understand biological evolution.
, one of the main participants in the study, Dr. Dong,
Nangu Institute, said that the so-called biological "living fossils" refer to some ancient organisms that have lasted for tens of millions of years. Other creatures of their generation have long since been extinct, and only they have survived on their own, retaining the original properties of the past. Both animal and plant "living fossils" retain valuable information about evolution. Plant "living fossils": Spike flower fir
This time, the research team found two spiked flower fir fossils in the Jurassic fossil layer of the village of Hugou in Ningcheng Road, Inner Mongolia. The two fossils are about 160 million years old and hold important structures such as ancient spiked fir branches, leaves, buds and seeds. The appearance of these structures is almost exactly the same as that of modern spiked fir. Further morphological analysis shows that the ancient spiked fir in the fossil can be classified as a modern spiked fir plant. This suggests that today's spiked fir is a class of ancient plants that have lasted at least 160 million years.
research results were published recently in the National Science Review.