The oldest known specimen of a blossoming bud is found in a 164 million-year-old fossilized plant.

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Researchers suggest that the discovery significantly impacts our understanding of the evolution of flowering plants.

China's 164 million-year-old plant fossil has yielded the earliest evidence of a flower bud. According to the new evidence, flowering plants first appeared between 145 million and 201 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.

This 1.7-inch-long (4.2-centimeter-wide) fossil was discovered in China's Inner Mongolia region and measured 0.8 inches (2 centimeters) wide. Each bud has a diameter of 3 square millimeters and is attached to a stem with a leafy branch and a bulbous fruit. Florigerminis jurassica has been given a new name by scientists.

The two main categories are angiosperms, the botanical term for blooming plants, and gymnosperms, the botanical term for non-flowering plants. Fraxinus jurassica was an angiosperm rather than a gymnospermic plant, as evidenced by this species's fossilized flower bud and fruit. Until recently, fossil evidence has revealed angiosperms did not appear between 66 million and 145 million years ago. Still, the new fossil is the most solid evidence, yet this is not the case.

According to senior author, Xin Wang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS), "many paleobotanists are astonished [by the fossil] as it is completely different from what is mentioned in books." I am not surprised at all," he continued.

Fossilized flowers have been found, but this is not yet the oldest specimen. Live Science earlier reported on a study in eLife in 2018 that described 174 million-year-old blossoms from a plant in the genus Nanjinganthus.

Even though Nanjinganthus is commonly thought of as a gymnosperm, some scientists have questioned if it truly is an angiosperm because of the lack of complexity in the flowers. This makes it difficult to discern flowers apart from other plant materials since they are so delicate, Wang said.

According to him, the newly discovered fossilized flower bud and fruit establish unequivocally that F. jurassica was an angiosperm. Therefore, the fossil demonstrates the presence of angiosperms in the Jurassic and calls for a new look at angiosperm evolution, experts noted in a statement.

Other known Jurassic plant genera, including Nanjinganthus, Juraherba, Yuhania, Jurafructus, Xingxueanthus, and Schmeissneria, may also be angiosperms. Still, Wang says there is no way to know without fossil evidence. Because of their Jurassic origins, scientists have concluded they were gymnosperms until today.

He said that angiosperms would have been extremely rare and geographically isolated throughout the Jurassic period, making it unlikely to locate well-preserved flower buds from any other angiosperms.

Wang further speculated that F. jurassica could be a link in the evolutionary chain connecting ancient angiosperm-like plants like Nanjinganthus with more recent true angiosperms found in the Cretaceous period, rather than the reverse.

Research on this topic was published online on January 6th in a journal by the Geological Society of London.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/oldest-flower-bud-fossil

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