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MAJOR UPHEAVAL. "Angiosperm range expansion and diversification have been major biotic upheavals in the Earth history." https://lnkd.in/eiM6qET View in LinkedIn

SUDDEN APPEARANCE. "The world of 120 million years ago was one of dynamic biological processes. During that time the flowering plants emerged as the dominant global floristic element, a transformative event that ultimately altered the character of the entire planet. Understandably, the rapid rise of angiosperms has intrigued paleoecologists and evolutionary biologists, who have strived to elucidate underlying explanations for their successful radiation." https://lnkd.in/e6kp7_K View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY MYSTERY. "The origin and extremely rapid diversification of flowering plants, which Darwin famously referred to as an “abominable mystery,” is one of the most extraordinary, and still not yet fully explained, phenomena in evolutionary history." https://lnkd.in/eZMh-NH View in LinkedIn

FIXATION BY DRIFT. "What is underappreciated by many nonevolution specialists is that much of molecular evolution in eukaryotes is primarily the result of genetic drift, or the fixation of neutral mutations. This view has been widely appreciated by molecular evolutionary biologists for the past 35 years." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

ABOMINABLE MYSTERY. "Darwin called their sudden appearance in the fossil record an “abominable mystery.” Since Darwin's time, we have been able to clarify that picture a little bit. Even so, our understanding of the origin of the angiosperm lineage is dubious at best. When and why did flowers evolve? There is scant fossil evidence to illustrate the early evolutionary steps in this development of flowers." https://lnkd.in/euP3eDr View in LinkedIn

"MICHAEL LYNCH once wrote, “Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of population genetics” (Distinguished professor of biology, Indiana University). http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

SECOND IN RICHNESS. "As the dominant plant taxon, angiosperms are estimated to contain at least 350,000 extant species, placing them second only to insects in terms of species richness. This contrasts with their ancient woody competitors, the gymnosperms, which are apparently in stasis and comprise less than 1,000 species." https://lnkd.in/eyHApyP View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend in flowering plants and their rapid emergence and domination of the plant world. Due to the innovation of flowers, their co-evolution with pollinating insects, and other structural modifications of their forms, this group of plants was able to diversify rapidly. A flower is not just a flower. It is an historical testament to complex co-evolution and innovation. View in LinkedIn

DOMINANT PLANTS. "Our world is an angiosperm world. The roughly 350,000 known species of flowering plants make up about 90% of all living plant species. Without them, we would have none of our major crops including those used to feed livestock, and one of the most important carbon sinks that mop up our carbon dioxide emissions would be missing." https://lnkd.in/e27U-gk View in LinkedIn

"THE EVOLUTION of seed plants and later angiosperms appears to be the result of two distinct rounds of whole genome duplication events. These occurred at 319 million years ago and 192 million years ago. Another possible whole genome duplication event at 160 million years ago perhaps created the ancestral line that led to all modern flowering plants." https://lnkd.in/en2Nbzs View in LinkedIn