The origin and early diversification of of angiosperms

Crane, Peter R.
Friis, Else Marie
Pedersen, Kaj Raunsgaard

Peter R. Crane is at The Field Museum, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605 and the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, USA: Else Marie Friis is at the Swedish Museum of Natural Hisotry, Box 50007, S104 05, Stockholm, Sweden; Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen is at the Department of Geology, University of Aarhus, Universitetsparken DK-8000, Aarhus, Denmark.

Nature 374(6517):p 27-33, March 2, 1995.

The major diversification of flowering plants (angiosperms) in the Early Cretaceous, between about 130 and 90 million years ago, initiated fundamental changes in terrestrial ecosystems and set in motion processes that generated most of the extant plant diversity. New palaeobotanical discoveries, combined with recent phylogenetic analyses of morphological and molecular data, have clarified the initial phases of this radiation and changed our perspective on early angiosperm evolution, though important issues remain unresolved.