Natural History Wanderings

The New York Times reports

Now, after a heroic DNA sequencing effort, a collaboration involving hundreds of scientists has created a new family tree for flowering plants. Comparing gene sequences from more than 9,500 species — many of them dried specimens preserved in museums — scientists have sketched important branching points in the evolution of flowering plant life. In a study published in April in the journal Nature, the data they present suggests that more than 80 percent of major modern flowering plant lineages originated in a sudden burst of invention that began around 150 million years ago, in the late Jurassic Period.

Read article at A New Evolutionary Tree of Flowers? For Spring? Groundbreaking. – The New York Times