The History of Land Plants

Case 6: Why are flowering plants dominant today?

Flowering plants, the new revolution

Tertiary flowering plants

By the Early Tertiary, 65 million years ago, the flower plants had evolved to the point where many are recognizable to living groups.  These include plants with leaves, inflorescences and flowers similar to alders, oaks and hickories.

Cretaceous flowering plants

Flowering plants are unlike other living and extinct seed plants.  These adaptations may explain the huge diversity of flowering plants.

• First, their seeds are within tissue that forms a fruit. 
• Second, they have their male and female organs together in a flower. 
• Lastly, in most flowers, the pollen is carried to the female organ by animal pollinators. 

Although there are about 300,000 species of flowering plants, the earliest confirmed record is from the Early Cretaceous 135 million years ago.  The first fossils are found near the equator and by the 100 million years they are found from the equator to the poles and on every continent.  Many of the earliest forms are not recognizable to living groups, although a few belong to groups, such as water lilies, that live today.

More recent fossils that lived during the last 65 million years are more similar to living species, and some can be assigned to modern groups.  Some of these leaf and flower fossils are clearly related to plants living today, such as oaks and alder.

To see close-ups of the specimens in this display, click here.

Invasion of Land

The First Trees

Seed Plant: Boldly Growing Where No Plant Has Grown Before

Monster Plants That Created Coal 

Plants The Dinosaurs Ate