[Taxacom] Angiosperm origins: Darwin's "abominable" mystery

[Thomas Lammers]

----- Original Message -----
From: Curtis Clark <jcclark-lists at earthlink.net>

> Axelrod introduced me to the idea of Triassic angiosperms; his contention was that, because they evolved in the uplands, we'd be unlikely to see fossils.<

I try to imagine what it would be like if we could travel back to study in the field the population to which the angiosperms of today trace their origin.  I don't imagine we would see anything that, in the context of the flora of that time, would stand out as all that different.  The population-biology view of evolution suggests that the characters that today are hallmarks of a well-distinguished class or phylum would likely have been mere intrapopulational variation at the earliest points in time. "Oh, look!  In some of the plants in this population, the second sperm nucleus fuses with the polar nuclei!  What an odd little aberration!"  

Furthermore, even as some of these traits stabilized in species, it still may have been awhile before "anything came of it."  Just as the mammals "hung out" for quite a long while in the Mesozoic before getting their chance to proliferate, so too might angiosperms have piddled around, cooling their heels, for millions of years before opportunity came knocking.  We no doubt have found and named fossils that, if we could study them as living entities, we would call angiosperms.

Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Curator of the Herbarium
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/biology/Lammers.htm
http://www.kewbooks.com/asps/ShowDetails.asp?id=615