New research has revealed that Australia's oldest flowering plants are 126 million years old and may have resembled modern magnolias, buttercups and laurels.
Undertaken by University of Melbourne palynologist, Dr Vera Korasidis, the study also found that Australia’s first blooms got their foothold in ‘high southern latitude’ regions like the Otway and Gippsland ranges.
Dr Korasidis’ research, “The rise of flowering plants in the high southern latitudes of Australia”, reconstructed our earliest flower-bearing forests, from 126-100 million years ago, to conclude that climate change prevented or slowed the expansion of flowers into Australasia with the temperatures at the high southern latitudes too cold to support the earliest flowering plants.
The research also established that the first flowers related to 72 per cent of today’s living angiosperm species that first appeared in southern Australia about 108 million years ago - 17 million years after the first flowers evolved in equatorial regions.
Continue reading at University of Melbourne
Image via University of Melbourne
