5thvoice t1_j7o08q6 wrote on February 8, 2023 at 4:12 AM

Reply to comment by Cleistheknees in The discovery of an 80-million-year-old fossil plant in California pushes back the known origins of lamiids to the Cretaceous, extending the record of nearly 40,000 species of flowering plants including coffee, tomatoes, potatoes and mint that survived cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs by giuliomagnifico

We've had examples of much older (~130 mya) flowering plants for decades now. This discovery is specifically about lamiids, which only make up an (admittedly very large) portion of modern flowering plant species.

Cleistheknees t1_j7o11id wrote on February 8, 2023 at 4:19 AM

That is correct. The second “flowering plants” was a typo on my part, and should have been asterids. That said, I could still certainly be outdated on my understanding of the advent of asterids. To my knowledge the oldest specimens are dated to the Coniacian.