This May Be The First Flower That Ever Existed

A completely new fossil discovery in the mountains of Spain points to an aquatic plant that flowered 130 million years ago, as being among the first flowering crops on the planet.

One team of global paleobotanists have just found a 125-130 million-year-old freshwater plant, which they believe is among the "earliest flowering plants" on earth. It used to flourish in freshwater lakes in areas that are today hilly places in Spain, according to nycity.

The article was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

This aquatic plant, called Montsechia vidalii, was first found more than 100 years ago in the Iberian limestone deposits of central Spain, as well as in the Pyrenees Montsec Range on the country's French border.

The Indiana University (IU) paleobotanist David Dilcher and Europe team is representative of a large change in the form of the planet's earliest flowers, called angiosperms.

Dilcher said, "This discovery raises significant questions about the early evolutionary history of flowering plants, as well as the role of these plants in the evolution of other plant and animal life".

The Montsechia, which has appeared, is like its most modern descendent, identified as Ceratophyllum, which is also called coontails or hornworts. The dark, green, aquatic plant with coarse, tufty leaves, was an important decorative plant in modern aquariums and koi ponds.

Montsechia is at least "contemporaneous, if not more ancient, than Archaefructus," Dilcher added.

The study team analyzed more than 1,000 fossilized remains of Montsechia after using drops of hydrochloric acid to extract plant remains from rock deposits. Its "protective cuticles" were also bleached with nitric acid and potassium chlorate, according to redorbit.