Darwin's abominable mystery and the fossil record of early flowers

 
Else Marie Friis (with Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen and Peter R. Crane)

Swedish Natural History Museum, Stockholm, Sweden 

Darwin wrote in a letter to J. D. Hooker dated 22 July 1879: “The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery”. Although Darwin did not specifically mention the flowering plants in this famous quotation his “abominable mystery” has since then been tightly linked to the origin and diversification of angiosperms, one of the major biotic upheavals in the history of life, and still a major puzzle in evolutionary biology. In Darwin’s time angiosperms were thought to enter the fossil record very sudden and apparently “fully evolved” in the mid-Cretaceous. Darwin therefore speculated about a long pre-Cretaceous history for angiosperms in remote areas that have left no fossil signals. However, an improved stratigraphic framework developed in the last century together with the discovery and study of numerous informative angiosperm fossils has greatly changed our view of early angiosperm evolution. It is now clear that the first major phylogenetic diversification and ecological radiation of angiosperms took place in the Early to mid-Cretaceous over a relatively short time interval of some few million years. Subsequently, angiosperms steadily increased in both their diversity and abundance, only slowly reaching the levels of systematic differentiation and diversity they display today. A key remaining issue is the relationship of angiosperms to other seed plants, which is still unresolved. New fossils are constantly being added to the fossil record of angiosperms and other seed plants and these may be relevant to clarifying this aspect of angiosperm evolution.

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