Mythical ‘first flower’ potentially discovered to be 130 million-year-old

Monsechia vidalii was a leafy freshwater plant that was likely to have been munched on by brachiosaurs and iguanodons more than 125 million years ago.

“A “first flower” is technically a myth, like the ‘first human, ‘” explained Indiana University’s David Dilcher, the archaeobotanist who led the study, in a news release. – Picture by Denver Museum of Nature & Science via The New York TimesMIAMI, August 18 – An ancient plant that grew underwater in what is modern day Europe, had no petals and bore one single seed may have been the world’s first known flowering plant, a study said yesterday.

Experts dated the weed at between 125 million and 130 million years old and showed that despite appearances it was an angiosperm, or flowering plant.

David Dilcher and his colleagues might like to think of Montsechia vidalii as the earliest angiosperm ever to grown and breed on Earth, but the fact of the matter is there are other contender to this title.

A prehistoric aquatic plant may be the oldest flowering planet ever found, reshaping scientists’ understanding of what the earliest ancestors of flowers might have looked like. A carpel, in turn, is the female reproductive organ of a flower. “The reinterpretation of these fossils provides a fascinating new perspective on a major mystery in plant biology”. Previously, China native “Archaefructus sinensis” was considered as one of the earliest flowers found on earth.

‘It’s interesting that the mechanisms for reproduction that are still with us today had already been established some 100 million years ago’.

By analyzing more than 1,000 fossil remains, scientists have discovered that an unassuming, 130-million-year-old water-dwelling plant could be one of Earth’s first flowering plants. But based on this new analysis, we know now that Montsechia is contemporaneous, if not more ancient, than Archaefructus.

The plant, which may have looked like seaweed that grew in freshwater, contains a single seed, which is the defining characteristic of a flowering plant, or angiosperm.

Professor Dilcher said: ‘Montsechia possesses no obvious “flower parts”, such as petals or nectar-producing structures for attracting insects, and lives out its entire life cycle under water. They applied hydrochloric acid drop by drop to stones containing the plants, in order to reveal the precise structures of stems and leaves.

The modern descendant of this ultra ancient plant is Caratophyllum, otherwise known as coontails or hornworts.

Ceratophyllum is a dark green aquatic plant whose coarse, tufty leaves make it a popular addition to aquariums and ornamental ponds. The scientists are now looking to understand more about the species connecting Montsechia and Ceratophyllum and delve deeper into when other species.