Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!udel!princeton!pucc!UNASMITH
From: UNASMITH@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Flowering plants
Message-ID: <11928@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 90 20:15:36 GMT
References: <28272@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1990Oct18.142341.6998@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Reply-To: UNASMITH@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 26
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article


eesnyder@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Eric E. Snyder) writes:
>>A friend of mine came up with a statement that struck me a patently
>>absurd....

>>"there is no evidence of angiosperms (flowering plants) in the
>>fossil record"

Not true.

frist@ccu.umanitoba.ca writes:
>Your friend is probably a Special Creationist. While Gymnosperms dominated
>much of the first parts of the Mesozoic era (Triassic and Jurassic),
>starting in the Cretaceous period (roughly 130Myr ago), the angiosperm
>radiation can be observed. During this period, mass extinctions of

There is evidence of a similar radiation (enormous diversification and
increase in numbers) of _insects_, which makes for a very nice story
about coevolution.

[stuff deleted]


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