mold with Baltic amber from the Eocene epoch , researchers have discovered fossilized carnivorous plant yap for the first metre ever . These leaves from insect - eating anthesis plant are between 35 and 47 million year old , and they likely belong to the same family as a South African flypaper cakehole works . Thefindingswere publish inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis week .
Fossil tree resin ( or amber ) is remarkably good at carry on microscopic item of small organisms ; fossils enclose in amber are oftentimes absent everywhere else . But liken to insects and other animals , plants are rarely trammel this way . The only exception are cum from the aquatic carnivorous plantAldrovanda , which can be foundfloating in multiple continents today . No carnivorous industrial plant yap have been reported in the dodo record , yet .
Now , an outside squad led byAlexander Schmidt from the University of Göttingenin Germany revealed two carnivorous leaf fossils enclosed in a opus of Baltic amber that was previously extracted from a mine near Kaliningrad , Russia . They both have relevant characteristics that are similar toRoridula , an adhesive flypaper trap plant found only in the southwestern cape of South Africa . These plants have awkward , resiny trapping glue and differently - sized tentacles organized hierarchically . The longest tentacle make the first tangency with the fair game , which then get under one’s skin stuck to the intermediate - sized tentacle ; finally , the modest tentacles immobilise the quarry .
ModernRoridulaare unique among carnivorous plants : In a complex mutualistic association , they swear on symbiotic insect to digest and derive nourishment from entrapped quarry . Two resident mintage of “ Roridula hemipteron " feed on the trapped beast , and the plants get their nutritional intake through the bugs ’ feces . “ We did n’t expect to find these leave of absence in the European fossil record , because Roridula is restricted to South Africa,“Schmidt tells ABC Science .
The fresh fossil leaves are about five millimeters long and 0.2 millimeters wide at the base , and like modernRoridulaspecies , they ’re strewn with unicellular hairs and multicellular stalk secretory organ ( or tentacles ) with a pore at the apex . The dodo leaves also show grounds of five unlike tentacle size class , and the apex of each narrow , tapered leaf ends in a single tentacle . The team also happen stick constitutive remains that indicate how the plants excreted a sticky secretion just like the adhesion trap of New carnivorous plants .
These geomorphologic similarity suggest that the young dodo are early members of Roridulaceae . " Carnivorous plants are found in many innovative flora families , each with their own agency of catching prey,“Schmidt add . " This specific trap is unequaled to the industrial plant in South Africa . " However , this lineage was previously thought to be of Gondwanan origin – that is , mostly in the southerly hemisphere – so it looks like the new fossils also widen the statistical distribution of roridulid plants .
