Paleontologists have discovered strange flowers from 15 million years ago

Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, September 30 (Reporter Wang Wei) reporter 30 from China
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology was informed that Chinese and Spanish palaeontologists recently found a strange flower in amber fossils about 15 million years ago. Unlike the flowers, petals, males, and females of ordinary flowers, which grow almost from the same point, this ancient flower seems to have been "vertically stretched", and the various organs of the flower grow up and down on a flower branch in turn.
Xin, a researcher at the
Institute of Southern Ancient Studies who led the study, said the amber fossils involved in the study were from the Dominica of North America and are about 15 million years old. The team found a small flower about 3 mm long, the components of which are clearly visible and belong to a typical real gemal plant. The researchers named it "Ding's Flower" in honor of Mr. Ding Shisun, a famous mathematician in China.
Is particularly unique, the general flowers of the flower buds, petals, males, females are closely "squeezed" in the same part of the flower shaft - flower support, but the flower axis of the Ding's flower is elongation: the components are arranged up and down in turn, the spacing between the two is pulled apart, as if through the "vertical stretch", grow on a branch like.
", people have been trying to figure out how the flowers came about. The discovery of Ding's flower gives us a very important clue, and its morphology suggests that the flower is likely to be a vertically compressed branch. In the near future, we may be able to completely solve the mystery of the evolution of flowering. Wang Xin said.
research has been published in the academic journal Palaeoentomology. The study was
by scholars from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Fujian University of Agriculture and Forgology, the University of Bigo, Spain, and fushun Amber Research Institute. Amber fossils with Ding's flower specimens exist at Fushun Amber Research Institute.