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About 40 million years ago, flowers bloomed in the coniferous forests of the Baltic Sea. Dripping tree resin envelops petals and pollen, offering an eternal look at fleeting moments from our planet’s past.
Scientists have taken a new look at a unique amber fossil that was first recorded in 1872 as belonging to the pharmacist Kowalewski in what is now Kaliningrad, Russia.
The impressive fossil was largely forgotten in the collection of Berlin’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), says Eva-Maria Sadowski. new research.
She said she heard about the fossilized flower, formally known as specimen X4088, when it was passed to her by a retired colleague who thought she was exaggerating.
“He once visited BGR and said he saw it. The most amazing and largest amber flower in the collection. Didn’t know they had an amber collection. So she asked the curator of the BGR collection if she could come see the collection, and she found specimen X4088,” she said in an email.
“I was surprised to see inclusions in such a large flower.”
28 mm (1.1 inch) It is the largest known flower fossilized in amber, three times the size of similar fossils.
Sadowski examined pollen extracted from amber. She discovered that the flower had been misidentified when she first studied it.
“The original genus name for this specimen was Stewartia in the family Theaceae. When first studied in the 19th century, they had not discovered or studied pollen.
This flower is closely related to the genus of flowering plants known today as Symplocos, better known in Asia.
Originally named Stewartia kowalewskii, the authors have proposed a new name for the flower Symplocos kowalewskii.
Amber fossils provide an interesting and three-dimensional view of the past.the same as plant When Flowers, dinosaur tail, crab, ants from hell, spider mom and her cub, ancient birdfeet and lizard skull It was found buried in a mass of tree resin.
The study was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
