Amborella Day

1 galactic revolution ago

The Triassic ends 201 million years ago with another major mass extinction (the fourth, by the usual count, after the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, and end-Permian). Not quite as bad as the end-Permian (“only” 75% of species go extinct). This coincides with the formation of the Central Atlantic LIP (Large Igneous Province), which now includes a lot of eastern North America, northeast Amazonia, and western North Africa. So the end Triassic mass extinction may be the result of volcanoes spewing lava and carbon dioxide as Pangaea splits into Laurasia (North America, most of Eurasia) and Gondwanaland (South America, Africa, Antarctica, India, Australia).

The succeeding Jurassic Period will be when dinosaurs become the dominant vertebrates on land. The mammals around are mostly shrew-sized and nocturnal.

Not as conspicuous is another evolutionary innovation: the ancestors of Amborella, a rare shrub found in the wild only on New Caledonia, split off from the other angiosperms, ancestors of all other flowering plants, 200 million years ago. (This was suspected for a while, and confirmed in 2012 with the sequencing of the Amborella genome.) We can call this the origin of flowers. Amborella has clusters of small white flowers, with male and female separate.

Spring is gearing up in the Northern hemisphere; some dwarf irises are in flower in my front yard, and the daffodils, celebrating global warming, are about to let loose. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to smell the flowers on Amborella Day, and take your mind off catastrophes past and present.