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PLANT EVOLUTION

Reconfiguring Darwin’s abominable mystery

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 194–195 (2022)Cite this article

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New evidence that a mid-Cretaceous fossil represents a modern angiosperm genus partly reinstates Darwin’s view of the fossil record.

Today, naming a mid-Cretaceous angiosperm as a modern genus is unusual and controversial. But in the current issue of Nature Plants, Shi et al.1 do just that. With evidence from multiple exquisitely preserved plant parts, they identify the modern genus Phylica in an amber that they date to 99 million years old1. While an extraordinary claim today, it is one that would not have surprised Charles Darwin.

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Fig. 1: Early angiosperm fossils from the mid-Cretaceous Dakota Formation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, UK

    Richard J. A. Buggs

  2. School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Richard J. A. Buggs

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  1. Richard J. A. Buggs
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Correspondence to Richard J. A. Buggs.

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Buggs, R.J.A. Reconfiguring Darwin’s abominable mystery. Nat. Plants 8, 194–195 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01117-x

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