Origin of angiosperms

Abstract

PROF. T. M. HARRIS, in his recent presidential address to Section K (Botany) of the British Association1, has directed attention to the successive failure of attempts to find fossils which appear to be ancestors of the Angiosperms. He makes a plea for more intensive study of Angiosperm-like fossils from rocks of the Triassic, Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous periods, in the confident hope that some will be found to be the early Angiosperms that have eluded search for so long. I suggest that this search for the forerunners of the Angiosperms might more profitably be directed towards gymnospermous plants occurring in the Middle Cretaceous period immediately before the first appearance of Angiosperms. In my opinion the origin of Angiosperms may have been so sudden and their early evolutionary change so rapid that there is little likelihood of early Angiosperms having been preserved as fossils. © 1960 Nature Publishing Group.