Earth's first flowering plants might have bloomed underwater, not on land

Scientists analyzing more than 1,000 fossil remains have found that the Montsechia vidalii, an extinct freshwater plant that lived 130 million years ago, was likely one of the first flowering plants on the planet.

The plant could change theories on how angiosperms — plants with the ability to produce flowers — first came into existence. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study authors wrote that because the plant is "so ancient and is totally aquatic," it "raises questions centered on the very early evolutionary history of flowering plants." Montsechia vidalii grew during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs still roamed. It didn't have petals like modern plants with flowers, the Los Angeles Times reports, but, it did have one single seed, a characteristic of angiosperms.

"Lower Cretaceous aquatic angiosperms, such as Archaefructus and Montsechia, open the possibility that aquatic plants were locally common at a very early stage of angiosperm evolution and that aquatic habitats may have played a major role in the diversification of some early angiosperm lineages," the study authors wrote.

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