One of the earliest examples of a winged seed has been found in a mine in the Anhui Province of China.
A team of scientists affiliated with a number of different institutions in China was responsible for the discovery.
Throughout the years, seeds have evolved to adapt to changing environments. Many plants have “winged seeds,” which contain features to help them glide through the wind.
These seeds’ structures act like a parachute or helicopter to help disperse them across longer distances, allowing for less competition between them.
Previously, research has shown that the first seeds evolved around 372 to 359 million years ago during the Famennian period.
Fossils indicate that most of the seeds were covered by an extra protective layer called a cupule, so none of them evolved wings.
Sometime later, the first wings started to appear. During the Famennian period, specifically in the Late Devonian, only two plant groups were known to have developed wing-like structures—Warsteinia and Guazia. They had four wings.
In the new study led by Deming Wang, the research team wanted to learn more about the origin and evolution of the wind dispersal strategies of plants on land.
So, they headed to the Jinchuan mine in the Wutong Formation in the Anhui. In the past, fossilized seeds had been discovered in the mine before.
SN – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only – pictured above is the Taiping Lake, located in the Anhui Province of China
While collecting samples in the mine, the team came across some seeds they did not recognize. Each of the seeds was about 2.5 to 3.3 centimeters in length and had no cupule.
Further study of the seeds revealed that they had three wings. The researchers were able to date the seeds back to 365 million years ago, which makes them the second oldest winged seeds ever found. The plant was placed in the Alasemenia tria genus.
The team also compared the newfound seeds’ dispersal ability with other early winged seeds that had two to four wings.
They concluded that the wings provided the seeds with a faster spin and a more stable flight. This likely allowed the seeds to travel across vast distances when lifted by the wind.
According to Wang, the three-winged seeds during the Late Devonian would have been followed by two-winged seeds during the Carboniferous period.
Then, during the Permian, there were seeds with single wings. Overall, the study provides more information on the origins of wind dispersal.
“Our discovery of Alasemenia adds to our knowledge of the origins of wind dispersal strategies in early land plants,” said senior author Pu Huang.
“Combined with our previous knowledge of Guazia and Warsteinia, we conclude that winged seeds as a result of integument outgrowth emerged as the first form of wind dispersal strategy during the Late Devonian, before other methods such as parachutes or plumes.”
The details of the findings were published in the scientific journal eLife.
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