Its name is Montsechia vidalii , it is 125 to 130 million years old and has been identified as one of the oldest flowering plants on Earth (angiosperms). Its discoverers have been a team of paleobotanists from Indiana University (USA) led by expert David Dilcher.
” This discovery raises important questions about the early history of plant evolution, as well as the role of these plants in the evolution of other flowering plant and animal life,” explains Dilcher.
The first fossils of this aquatic plant were discovered for the first time more than 100 years ago in the limestone deposits of the Iberian Mountain Range (Spain) and also in the Sierra del Montsec of the Pyrenees, near the border with France.
According to expert analyzes of more than 1,000 samples under a stereomicroscope, scanning electron microscope and light microscope, Monteschia is older even than Archaefructus, an extinct genus of seeded herbaceous aquatic plants originally assigned to the Late Jurassic. In fact, Archaefructus was proposed as the first known fossil of an Angiosperm.
Now, examination of such a large number of samples has determined that Montsechia belongs to the Barremian era of the early Cretaceous period , making this contemporary plant of dinosaurs as well known as the iguanodon or the brachiosaurus.
“ Montsechia does not have obvious flower parts like petals or nectar-producing structures to attract insects, and it lives its entire life cycle under water. The fruit contains a single seed ”, clarifies Dilcher. According to the researcher, its most modern descendant would be the Ceratophyllum demersum or “bed of frogs”.
“There is still much to discover about how some early species of seed plants eventually gave rise to the huge, beautiful, variety of flowers that now populate almost every environment on Earth, ” concludes Dilcher.
The finding has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
