Here is what the page “Ancient Climate Shifts May Explain Why Flowering Plants Dominate Earth, Study Finds” contains. Extreme global warming events millions of years ago may have driven both mass extinctions and bursts of plant diversity, helping flowering plants become the dominant land plants on Earth, according to a new study by researchers in Australia and Austria. The study, published in Nature Plants, analyzed fossilized pollen and spores to trace plant evolution across the two warmest periods in the past 140 million years: the mid-Cretaceous and early Cenozoic.
The findings suggest that these periods of intense heat were pivotal for the diversification of not only flowering plants, but also other major land plant groups. The research helps explain why flowering plants, or angiosperms, now represent the vast majority of plant species, shaping ecosystems and agriculture worldwide. For the complete material, the listing points back to the source inside the network.