Rocks yield clues to flower origins
By Sid Perkins
Organic chemicals trapped in rocks for more than 240 million years may now provide a clue to a biological riddle that has stood since the 19th century: Where did flowers come from?
Flowering plants suddenly appeared in the fossil record about 130 million years ago. The absence of progenitors in that record posed a puzzle that Charles Darwin referred to as “an abominable mystery.” Now, geochemist J. Michael Moldowan of Stanford University and his coworkers say they’ve found a chemical signature of flowering plants in ancient fossil-bearing rocks.