Yuzhoua juvenilis: Another Angiosperm Seen in the Early Permian?

ABSTRACT: "How old are angiosperms" is a frequently asked but still unanswered question. Although the underlying reason includes a lack of consensus on the criterion for fossil angiosperms, limited fossil finds, and other factors, the final answer to the question apparently lies in fossils, not wrangling among different schools. The currently mainstream idea in palaeobotany is that angiosperms cannot have existed earlier than the Early Cretaceous. This 64-year-old stereotype was recently iterated again in 2017. However, another hard-to-ignore fact is that this view is challenged by increasing pre-Cretaceous fossil evidence of angiosperms as well as molecular clock estimates. Here, we report a Permian angiosperm, Yuzhoua gen. nov. from Henan Province, China. This fossil plant has enclosed ovul

SUBMITTER: Wang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11856813 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature