Monday 27 January 2014

”100-Million-Year-Old” Flowers Look Modern, Darwin’s Abominable Mystery Still Unsolved

150 years after Darwin, the evolution of flowers is still a mystery.



Joel Kontinen

For Charles Darwin, the rapid development of flowering plants was “an abominable mystery”, as he described it to his friend Joseph Hooker in a letter dated 22 July, 1879.

A recent study on “100-million-year-old” flowers preserved in amber in Burma (Myanmar) reveals that they reproduced in the same way as modern flowers.

Study co-author George Poinar, a biologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said:” Here you have a hundred-million-year-old flower that looks like it was blooming last week."

For modern-day Darwinists, the mystery of flowering plants is still an abominable one. For all others, flowers speak of the ingenuity and creativity of their Maker.


Source:

Lee, Jane J. 2014. Oldest Known Fossil of Flowering-Plant Sex Found in Amber. National Geographic (6 January).