Immortalized Fern Reveals Evolutionary Standstill
A 180 year old fern was discovered in Sweden, and it was found in near perfect condition. Such good condition that even the tiniest of its cells were still intact, cytoplasm, nuclei, and all of the chromosomes were visible under a microscope. The cells were all in different stages of cell division. And after doing some comparing of ancient ferns to the ferns we have today, scientists found little difference. "The genome size of these reputed living fossils has remained unchanged over at least 180 million years — a paramount example of evolutionary stasis," wrote the authors of this paper.
The plant was most likely preserved when hydrothermal brine seep, salty water oozing from the earth, rapidly crystallized and froze the plant. Scientists concluded that this ancient fern is virtually the same as the now extremely common cinnamon fern, and has been at an evolutionary standstill.
NOS themes:
-science is tentative
- science is based on evidence
-science is collaborative
for more information :http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/immortalized-fossil-fern-reveals-evolutionary-standstill-n58056
This is a very interesting topic. I found this article that discusses the different varieties of plants and why they tend to live so long. This article says that hormones in certain plants are the ones that determines how long the plant lives. In other cases, a plant is just lucky and is frozen in a hibernation state so it will last longer. The article also says that the climate that the plant lives in determines the speed at which the plant grows and the lifespan of it. Read more at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pnas.org/content/95/19/11034.full#sec-3