After 150 Years, Scientists Have Identified the Largest Flower Fossil Species 40 Million Years Old

BERLIN – After 150 years scientists have finally managed to definitively identify the fossil species flower the largest ever found. Fossil a flower preserved in amber aged about 40 million years ago, was found in the Baltic forest, Northern Europe in 1872.

The fossil flower remained in the Natural History Museum in Berlin for the next century and a half. However, over the years, researchers have questioned the flower’s true identity.

Measuring about 1 inch or 28 millimeters wide, this remarkably well-preserved flower was classified when first discovered as Stewartia kowalewskii. Species is this is an ancient evergreen flowering plant from the late Eocene epoch (approx. 38 million to 33.9 million years ago) and now extinct.

Also read; 164 Million Years Old Flower Fossil Found in China

To be sure about the flower’s genus and species, the researchers extracted the pollen specks and examined them, along with the anatomy of the blooms, under a microscope. They determined that the flower was not of the Stewartia kowalewskii species or even of the Stewartia genus.

Instead, it is part of the species Symplocos, “a genus of flowering shrubs and small trees not found in present-day Europe but widespread in modern East Asia,” wrote The New York Times. 2023).

Now scientists have officially identified the largest fossil flower and it will be published in the journal Scientific Reports on January 12, 2023. The flower has been known for 150 years but is only now being definitively identified as a new species and offering new clues about past climates and ecosystems.

Therefore, the study authors proposed a new name for the flower: Symplocos kowalewskii. Although they are harder to come by, plants in amber provide paleobotanists with a great deal of information.

Also read; Ancient Crocodile Fossil Found in Romania, Endangered Species of the Gavial Group

Eva-Maria Sadowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, told The New York Times that this reclassification of flowers is important. This gives scientists a better understanding of the ecological diversity of Baltic amber forests and how the planet’s climate changes over time.

“These tiny grains are natural recorders of past climates and ecosystems. It can help measure how much our planet has changed in the past due to natural (non-human) causes,” said Regan Dunn, a paleobotanist and assistant curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in California.

(wib)