A variety of large fruits and seeds preserved in volcanic ash nearly 75 million years ago indicate that flowering plants were diverse and abundant during the dinosaur era.
Researchers analyzed fossils from the Jose Creek Formation in New Mexico. The specimens, buried by a volcanic eruption, include 77 different kinds of fruits and seeds.
Nearly a third of the seeds are fleshy, suggesting dispersal by animals rather than wind. This evidence points to co-evolution between angiosperms and the creatures that consumed their fruit.
Jaemin Lee at the University of California, Berkeley, said the findings show large fruits and seeds existed 10 million years before the asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous period. The discovery challenges the view that such plants only became prominent after that extinction 66 million years ago.
Cindy Looy, also at the university, noted that the forest structure would have differed greatly from modern ones despite familiar seed shapes.