Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s over. Valviloculus pleristaminis is a perfect example.
Scientists recently identified this mysterious extinct flower. It once bloomed in the Cretaceous period, a floral relic from a bygone era, preserved in amber that stopped in time from an unnamed day when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.
“This isn’t a Christmas flower, but it’s a beauty, especially considering it was part of a forest that existed 100 million years ago,” says Professor Emeritus George Poinar Jr. of Oregon State University.
Poinar Jr. it is a bit of an authority on the capabilities of amber in the form of a time capsule.
The octogenarian entomologist is widely regarded as the scientist who popularized the phenomenon of prehistoric insects and nematodes trapped in tree resin on a geological scale, ideas that literally flew most of the time into the fantasy of pop culture. of Jurassic Park.
(George Poinar Jr./OSU)
This lifelong approach began decades ago, but Poinar Jr.’s academic output is still prodigious. In recent years, he has described old, enamored ticks, discovered new insect life orders, traced the origins of malaria, and found his good number of forgotten flowers.
V. pleristaminis, which represents both a new genus and species of flowers, is one of the last in this expanding bouquet.
“The male flower is small, about 2 millimeters in diameter, but has about 50 stamens arranged like a spiral and the anthers point towards the sky,” explains Poinar.
“Despite being so small, the detail that still remains is striking. Our specimen was probably part of a cluster of the plant that contained many similar flowers, some possibly female.”
The specimen in question was obtained from the amber mines of Myanmar, as it has been preserved in marine sedimentary deposits dating back to the Middle Cretaceous, approximately 99 million years ago.
(George Poinar Jr./OSU)
According to researchers, V. pleristaminis, an example of an angiosperm (flowering plant), probably belongs to the order Laurales, particularly similar to the families Monimiaceae and Atherospermataceae.
But this strange extinct flower not only offers clues about the history of floral evolution.
According to Poinar Jr., V. pleristaminis and other Burmese amber angiosperm fossils like this one can also help solve an exceptional mystery about the ancient supercontinent Gondwana from which these plants arose.
Specifically, V. pleristaminis It once flourished in a piece of Gondwana called the West Burma Block, which broke off from the rest of the supercontinent at some unknown time in history.
When it is a matter of debate, with some geological hypotheses dating back to the date of separation 500 million years ago.
Poinar Jr.’s research, however, suggests that the West Burma block could not have transhipped from Gondwana to Asia before the first Cretaceous, as angiosperms only evolved and diversified about 100 million years ago.
The debate is unlikely to end soon, however V. pleristaminis and its amber-coated type provides a new line of thought on the matter, a budding secret that it hopes will be told to it for nearly 100 million years.
“The date of [the West Burma Block] Gondwana’s tectonic migration is not yet firmly established, but the 100 Ma age of amber, with plant and animal fossils related to the southern hemisphere, may influence a possible solution to this problem, “the researchers write. .
The findings are reported in Journal of the Texas Botanical Research Institute.