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Carnivorous plant fossil from 40 million years ago

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From New Scientist:

The leaves have hairs that could have been used to capture prey. With only two leaves preserved in the amber, it’s not yet possible to know what the entire plant looked like and what its diet could have been, but the plant family today catches a wide range of arthropods.

The Roridulaceae genus Roridula is a quirk of botanical carnivory, as the plants depend on relationships with other organisms to successfully digest their prey. They trap prey using sticky hairs on their leaves, but depend on a symbiotic species of capsid bug to digest them and then consume their droppings instead. One bug’s demise is another’s gain.

“It really is remarkable to consider that this genus was once so much more widespread, and this seems to indicate that it really is a relic today, hanging on against extinction,” says Martin Cheek, a senior botanist at Kew Gardens in London.

Not sure about that last point.

Maybe plants simply decided to start giving it back to animals. You’ve heard of: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? How about, if you can’t join ‘em, eat ‘em.

You get the idea here:

Comments
Carnivorous plant fossil from 40 million years ago
I think we're getting close to understanding why we are not finding any rabbits in the preCambrian.awstar
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They evolved from "fly-sensitive" cells.Silver Asiatic
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Carnivorous Plants - Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Excerpt: Moreover, it appears to be hard even to imagine clear-cut selective advantages for all the thousands of postulated intermediate steps in a gradual scenario, not to mention the formulation and examination of scientific (i.e. testable) hypotheses for the origin of the complex carnivorous plant structures examined above. http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/carn.pdf Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig: The Origin of Carnivorous Plants, Pt. 2 - audio podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-06-26T17_03_15-07_00 Geneticist W.-E. Loennig replies to Darwinist Nick Matzke on Carnivorous Plants: - September 2011 https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/geneticist-w-e-loennig-replies-to-darwinist-nick-matzke-it-heats-up/ Irreducible Complexity, 18 steps of the Venus Flytrap are listed in the following article: The Venus Flytrap, an Improbable Wonder that Baffled Darwin - Oct. 14, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/the_venus_flytr077891.htmlbornagain77
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