With its 28 millimeters, the flower is almost three times larger than the rest / web
Although the findings of small remains of plants and insects preserved in amber -a fossilized resin of plant origin- are relatively common, not flowers like the one just disclosed. It is a specimen of 28 millimeters long and up to 38 million years old that had remained ignored for a long time until it became the object of a new investigation.
The flower, which is nearly three times larger than others found in amber, was discovered 150 years ago in the Baltic forests of northern Europe and first described by the Natural History Museum in Berlin. However, its existence was hardly known until a team of researchers from the University of Vienna studied it again.
The results of their study, published yesterday in the journal Scientific Reports, indicate that the specimen comes from the late Eocene and that it could be up to 38 million years old.
In the new investigation, it was possible to extract pollen from the anthers, thanks to which it was possible to determine that the flower would be closely related to the Asian species of Symplocos.
The unusually large size of the specimen is due to the large effusion of resin that would have covered it, explain the authors of the study, according to which the properties of this material would have helped prevent organisms from growing on the flower, damaging it.
