INCREDIBLY RARE BOTANICAL EVENT CAPTURED IN AMBER

These entombed ancient sprouts pose intriguing questions for biologists.

The rare sight of 40 millionyear-old seeds sprouting from a pinecone fossil has been found immortalised in amber.

This unusual method of development – called precocious germination – isn’t common among plants in general and is almost unheard of in pines. The pinecone fossil provides the first evidence of the trait’s extraordinary age.

“Crucial to the development of all plants, seed germination typically occurs in the ground after a seed has fallen,” says palaeobotany expert George Poinar Jnr of Oregon State University, US. “We tend to associate viviparity – embryonic development while still inside the parent – with animals, and forget that it does sometimes occur in plants.”

This is the first fossil of plant viviparity involving seed germination, but Poinar says it may have occurred hundreds of millions of years earlier.