The flower that bloomed in time of the dinosaurs

THE ancestor of every living flower has been ‘recreated’ by scientists. Their mockup, based on a presumed original 140million years old, resembles a magnolia.

‘This is the best representation so far of the flower which is parent to every modern flower we see today, and would have existed while the dinosaurs were still on the planet,’ said Dr Emily Bailes, who worked on the European study.

To come up with the ancestral flower, the researchers combined evolutionary modelling with information about almost 800 existing species.

The study was led by Paris-Sud University, with co-authors from the University of London and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. The picture was published in the journal Nature Communications.