page_title: Flowering plant
section_title: Triassic and Jurassic
hierarchical_section_title: Flowering plant / Taxonomy / Evolutionary history / Triassic and Jurassic
caption_attribution_description: English: Malus sylvestris at Vosseslag - De Haan, Belgium Français&#160;: Pommier sauvage, au Coq (Belgique)
context_page_description: The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae, or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 64 orders, 416 families, approximately 13,000 known genera and 300,000 known species. Like gymnosperms, angiosperms are seed-producing plants. They are distinguished from gymnosperms by characteristics including flowers, endosperm within their seeds, and the production of fruits that contain the seeds. Etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure; in other words, a fruiting plant. The term comes from the Greek words angeion and sperma.
  The ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, 245 to 202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known from ~140 mya. They diversified extensively during the Early Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, and replaced conifers as the dominant trees from 100 to 60 mya.
context_section_description: Based on current evidence, some propose that the ancestors of the angiosperms diverged from an unknown group of gymnosperms in the Triassic period (245–202 million years ago). Fossil angiosperm-like pollen from the Middle Triassic (247.2–242.0 Ma) suggests an older date for their origin.  A close relationship between angiosperms and gnetophytes, proposed on the basis of morphological evidence, has more recently been disputed on the basis of molecular evidence that suggest gnetophytes are instead more closely related to other gymnosperms. 
  The fossil plant species Nanjinganthus dendrostyla from Early Jurassic China seems to share many exclusively angiosperm features, such as a thickened receptacle with ovules, and thus might represent a crown-group or a stem-group angiosperm. However, the interpretation of the structures in this fossils are highly contested. 
  The evolution of seed plants and later angiosperms appears to be the result of two distinct rounds of whole genome duplication events. These occurred at 319 million years ago and 192 million years ago. Another possible whole genome duplication event at 160 million years ago  perhaps created the ancestral line that led to all modern flowering plants. That event was studied by sequencing the genome of an ancient flowering plant, Amborella trichopoda, and directly addresses Darwin's "abominable mystery". 
  One study has suggested that the early-middle Jurassic plant Schmeissneria, traditionally considered a type of ginkgo, may be the earliest known angiosperm, or at least a close relative.
caption: Flowers of Malus sylvestris (crab apple)
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