Podcast 68 - Plonts

The gang discusses two papers about the evolutionary placement of some Cretaceous flowering plants (angiosperms). Meanwhile, Amanda finds her alter ego,  James goes very old school with his jokes, and Curt really doesn't want to talk about the next paper.

Simple text summary

The group talk about two papers about things that need the sun and grow coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from them. These are some of the earliest things that need the sun and grow coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from them, and they are found under water. The first paper looks at if their thing that needed the sun and grew coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from it to see if it was really the first one and what it tells us about how the earliest things that need the sun and grew the coloured things would have lived. The first paper decides that this old thing that needed the sun and grew coloured things was not the first, and that it does not tell us how the earliest ones lived. The second paper forgets that the first paper happened and does the same with with another thing that needs the sun and grows coloured things.

References

Friis, Else Marie, et al. "Archaefructus–angiosperm precursor or specialized early angiosperm?." Trends in plant science 8.8 (2003): 369-373.

Gomez, Bernard, et al. "Montsechia, an ancient aquatic angiosperm."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.35 (2015): 10985-10988.