Ancient Flowering Plants May Have Used Dinosaurs to Spread Their Seeds
Fossilized fruits from the late Cretaceous period are challenging a longstanding idea about how flowering plants spread their seeds. Scientists had believed that angiosperms did not use animals for seed dispersal until after the Age of Dinosaurs, but new evidence from these ancient fruits suggests otherwise.
The research indicates that flowering plants may have established mutualistic relationships with dinosaurs for seed dispersal tens of millions of years earlier than previously estimated. This discovery reshapes our understanding of plant-animal interactions during the Cretaceous period and the evolutionary history of angiosperms.
The fossilized fruits show characteristics consistent with seed dispersal by animals, suggesting that dinosaurs may have played a crucial role in helping flowering plants spread and colonize new areas during the Mesozoic era. This finding adds an important new dimension to our understanding of how ecosystems functioned in the age of dinosaurs.