First Flower Seeds from Dinosaur Era Discovered

The world may never know if dinosaurs stopped to smell the flowers, but scientists have uncovered a few more clues about the ancient blossoms that grew alongside ankylosaurs

Various fruits and seeds of Early Cretaceous flowering plants, reconstructed from synchrotron radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) scans.

 and iguanadons. Recently, researchers discovered tiny Cretaceous flower seeds dating back 110 million to 125 million years, the oldest-known seeds of flowering plants. These puny pips offer a glimpse into the biology powering the ancient predecessors of all modern flowers.

The seeds are miniscule — the largest was no more than 0.1 inch (2.5 millimeters) in diameter — and unusually well-preserved, in such good condition that their internal cell structures were still visible. For the first time, scientists were able to detect seed embryos, the part of the seed where a new plant grows and emerges, and food storage tissues surrounding them. These structures offered a rare glimpse into how the Cretaceous seeds grew, and how they compare with plants alive today.

Else Marie Friis, lead author of the study and professor emerita at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, has analyzed some of these fossil remains of angiosperms — flowering plants — preserved in soils in Portugal and North America. She and her colleagues used a relatively new visualization technique — synchrotron radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM), which allowed them to explore the delicate fossils without damaging or destroying them. They imaged 250 seeds spanning 75 different species (some were also different genera), revealing the embryos and nutrient structures inside the seeds in exquisite detail. 

Fossils of one of the oldest flowering plants on Earth date back to the early Cretaceous period, approximately 125 million to 130 million years ago. The ancient plant, Montsechia vidalii, lived underwater and is raising new questions about the planet's first flowering plants. [Read full story about the ancient plant fossils]

Aquatic plant

Montsechia vidalii had long shoots and small leaves and likely bloomed underwater. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana U

niversity)

Ancient blooms

The fossilized remains of Montsechia vidalii show long- and short-leaved forms of the flowering plant. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana University)
Fossilized remains

The intact fossil of the aquatic plant Montsechia vidalii that grew in freshwater lakes. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana University)
Underwater pollination

Researchers said the plant appears to have relied on water currents alone to move its pollen about. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana University)
Location and distribution

Montsechia vidalii fossils were found in what is now northeastern Spain. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana University)
Ancient find

The ancient plant is about 125 million to 130 million years old, and lived in the early Cretaceous period. (Credit: David Dilcher, Indiana University)