Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!kuento
From: kuento@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Flowering plants (and insects)
Message-ID: <26263.2722291a@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 22 Oct 90 04:02:50 GMT
References: <28272@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1990Oct18.142341.6998@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <11928@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 40

In article <11928@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, UNASMITH@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith) writes:
> 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.

To be more specific, the Lepidoptera (butterflies/moths) and
Hymenoptera (wasps/bees) showed the most dramatic "explosions" -
The speed of diversification in the bees, for example, must have
been incredible (on a geologic scale) because the entire superfamily
originated after/with flowers (bees feed their young with pollen, and
the primary synapomorphies all relate to pollen-carrying), and there
were already *highly* social bees from modern genera 80 million years
ago (the oldest fossil bee, in fact - a Trigona stingless bee in
amber). In other words, it would appear that the bees had pretty much
evolved most of their lineages by the mid-Cretaceous (there are some
30,000 species today).

>   - Una            UNASMITH@PUCC                 : BITNET
>                    unasmith@pucc.Princeton.EDU   : Internet
>                    una@tropic.Princeton.EDU      : Internet
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Yanega        (Snow Museum, Univ. of KS, Lawrence, KS 66045)
My card: 0 The Fool                        Bitnet: Beeman@ukanvm
Disclaimer? Ha! Have opinion, will travel...