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"The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher
plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery."
—Charles Darwin in a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker,
1879.
Scott, D. H. 1911. The Evolution of Plants, p. 37.
The flowering plants arose in the early Cretaceous (120-130 mya);
however, no fossils showing a transition from gymnosperm to angiosperm
have been discovered. This makes the origin of the angiosperms mysterious.
From the fossil record we do know that the angiosperms underwent a
rapid radiation and by the end of the Cretaceous (65-70 mya) most
flowering plant families had evolved.
Morphological, anatomical, and molecular data have been used with
extant and extinct taxa to examine the progenitors of the angiosperms.
Through the links on the left, you’ll be able to learn about the various
hypotheses of the origin of angiosperms. The issue is long from being
resolved; however, current data from molecular systematics are shedding
new light on this subject.
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