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Flowering Plants' Roots Pushed Back 100M Years

Posted by Unknown on from the carl-sagan-lied-to-me dept.

Rambo Tribble writes "Frontiers in Plant Science has published research which suggests that angiosperms' origins are a lot older than we have thought; 100 million years older, in fact. This puts the roots of these plants in the Triassic, not the Cretaceous, as previously thought."

7 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Damn by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

    Those are some deep roots. Would hate to have to try to dig those roots out with a trowel.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  2. Thus providing another example of scientific error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly science is always correcting itself, it cannot be infallible, but is prone to mistakes that they are always fixing. A flawed system than cannot be trusted.

    Unlike religion, which is never ever proven wrong. That makes it reliable and trustworthy. It's even self-certifying.

  3. Re:Thus providing another example of scientific er by H0p313ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, let's all worship angiosperms.

    That does have it's merits, for example we can prove they exist and unlike many gods they are nice to have in the house and garden.

    --
    XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
  4. Re:Thus providing another example of scientific er by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apple trees are angiosperms.

    The Tree of Knowledge is an apple tree.

    Eris throws an apple in the central Discordian myth.

    And outside of that, other trees feature prominently in various myths (Yggdrasil is a yew tree, tree roots resemble the FSM's noodly appendages...)

    I think we have a pretty healthy respect for certain angiosperms, even if they're not outright worshipped as a group.

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  5. Re:Thus providing another example of scientific er by Rambo+Tribble · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sex with relatives, at that.

  6. The found pollen by cusco · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What they found was pollen, of a type normally found later in the fossil record. That they found a variety of different forms of pollen suggests that angiosperms had been around long enough to have diversified already, so this is probably not the last that we'll hear about this.

    --
    "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  7. Trouble teaching kids biology by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One day, we were on the lawn, where a maple tree and a white pine tree grow. I asked the students which were more closely related: The maple and the pine tree, or the maple and the grass? I could not convince most of them that the 2 flowing plants were more closely related. Most insisted that being trees, they were closely related. No wonder we have trouble teaching kids science.