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“From the ubiquitous daisy to the fantastical orchid, flowering plant species are as diverse as they are numerous. It turns out that these bloomers went through an evolutionary “Big Bang” of sorts some 130 million years ago . . . “Flowering plants today comprise around 400,000 species,” said Pam Soltis, curator at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “To think that the burst that gave rise to almost all of these plants occurred in less than 5 million years is pretty amazing — especially when you consider that flowering plants as a group have been around for at least 130 million years.” . . . From the length of the diagrams’ branches along with known rates of genetic change, the teams estimated that three lineages went through a major diversification in an evolutionary “blink of an eye.” As for the cause of the explosion of plant diversity, that’s still a floral mystery. Perhaps a major climatic event was the trigger, the researchers suggest.”