Perfectly preserved in a piece of amber flower - 45 million years

This delicate flower was forever preserved in amber. Every petal and even the tiny fibers on the petals are perfectly preserved. Scientists believe that this flower bloomed about 45 million years ago. Botanists attributed it to an extensive Asterid treasure , which also includes potatoes, different types of pepper, and a coffee tree.

To determine the age of an object located in a piece of amber is quite difficult. But scientists George Poinar (George Poinar) and Lena Struve (Lena Struwe) used two methods to determine the age of the object, and received a fairly wide interval - from 45 million to 15 million years. Such a spread was due to the fact that there are extremely few such fossils, there are no other objects with which you can compare this finding and find out the age more accurately. Therefore, scientists have gone quite a difficult way.


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The researchers decided to find and analyze the species identity of other forms of living organisms from the same piece of amber. These are the foraminers and coccoliths. The evolution of these organisms is well studied by scientists, experts can say with certainty which time period this or that species belongs to. Initially, it was clear that the flower bloomed long before the appearance of monkeys in the middle of the tertiary period .



Struve, a botanist and asterid treasurer, was confident that a new species of flowering plant was found. The flower itself is very similar to members of the genus Strychnos (family Loganiaceae), which includes about 200 species of plants, many of which are poisonous. “The characteristics that are used to determine the species of the genus Strychnos are the particularities of the structure of the flower, and we are lucky that we have found this fossil,” says Struve. After successful identification of the generic affiliation of the flower, the plant species was named Strychnos electri.



It is not yet possible to say whether Strychnos electri was poisonous, but it can be used to understand what the ancient forests were. “Samples like this help to understand the ecosystem of the distant past. This sample also showed that the Asterid group, which gives man a lot of things, existed many millions of years ago, ”scientists say.