Aptian Stage

What happened during this time?

• Angiosperms spread to the under-story floodplains.

• One of earliest known angiosperms, Archaefructus appears

  • Herbaceous, aquatic plant (125 Ma)

  • Carpels and stamens produced on elongate stem 

    • The structures lack petals or sepals 

    • Stamens proximal; carpals distal 

    • Is the elongate stem in Archaefructus the receptacle of a single flower (with many carpals/stamens), or an inflorescence with many apetalous flowers? 

  • Depending on the above answer, Archaefructus may not be basal within angiosperms 

    • Close to Nymphaeales or basal eudicots.

• Potomacapnos apeleutheron, a eudicot from the Aptian, is also one of the oldest angiosperms (Jud and Hickey 2013)

  • The fossil most closely resembles a modern subfamily of poppies, called the Fumarioideae

  • The eudicots are thought to be more derived, which may push back the origin of angiosperms to the very beginning of the Cretaceous

• Earliest evidence of filmy ferns (Hymenophyllaceae) from ~120 Ma (Herrera et al. 2017)