IN TINY FOSSILS, BOTANISTS SEE TINY WORLD

[Peter Rauch]

[Excerpt from]
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 09:41:15 -0500
SCIENCE-IN-THE-NEWS at LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Today's Headlines - December 21, 1999

IN TINY FOSSILS, BOTANISTS SEE TINY WORLD
from The New York Times

Ninety million years ago, on what is now an empty lot in
Sayreville, N.J., a flower-filled tropical forest stood in
flames, its many blossoms burning and smoldering away not into
ashy oblivion, but into paleontological perpetuity.  For, as
scientists now know, the fires that periodically swept these
woods so long ago preserved its blooms as perfect charcoal
fossils, creating the most bountiful and exquisitely preserved
cache of ancient flowers in the world.

Biologists at Cornell University have already uncovered more than
200 species of fossil flowers at the site, including ancient
relatives of carnations, cactuses, teas, azaleas, water lilies,
oaks, pitcher plants and magnolias. These charcoal flowers,
preserved in breathtaking three-dimensional detail right down to
the level of the individual cell, are revealing not only how
ancient relatives of modern plants looked but also, in some
cases, how they lived at this time when the dinosaurs still
roamed New Jersey.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-archaeo-flowers.html