Wednesday, March 2,1988 Arts & Entertainment £
‘First Flowers’ exhibit at UNL
Hy Mick uyer
Staff Reporter
Flowering plants, as we know
them today, have not always covered
the earth. The first flowers emerged
about 140 m i 11 ion years ago and havc
dominated the world’s flora ever
since.
The University of Nebraska State
Museum in Morrill Hall is showing
an exhibit, “The First Flowers,” trac
ing the development of flowering
plants.
The exhibit features photographs
of such flowers as well as displays of
fossil leaves, seeds and a cross-sec
tion of the trunk of an extinct tree.
Dr. Margaret Bolick, curator of
botany for the museum, organized
the exhibit. She said the rocks of the
Dakota Formation in southeastern
Nebraska record the change to a
world of flowering plants “in a most
spectacular manner.”
“There are other places in the
world where you can find pieces of
flowering plants from this period,”
she said. “But the rocks in the Dakota
Formation in Nebraska and north
eastern Kansas is the only place in the
world where intact fossil specimens
from this period can be found.
“That’s kind of exciting for Ne
braska,” she said.
in
‘They were the first
plants to take ad
vantage of animal
behavior’
—Bolick
• • • • • . 11 i • nm •-... iim • •
Bolick said at least three different
kinds of fossil flowers have been
found in the Dakota sediments in
Nebraska and Kansas. One is similar
to the sycamore, another resembles
the magnolia, and the third is not
quite like any other living flower, but
seems to be related to Rosidac, which
includes roses and their relatives.
Bolick said one theory botanists
use to explain the shift to flowering
* ^
plants is that flowering plants arc
much more efficient in the way they
grow and reproduce.
“They were the first plants to take
advantage of animal behavior,” she
said.
“Scientists, including the late
Nebraska author Loren Eislcy, have
speculated that the change in plant
life to a world dominated by flower
ing plants during the first half of the
Cretaceous period made the evolu
tion of humans and other mammals
possible,” Bolick said.
The reasoning is that flowering
plants have fruits and abundant
seeds, two calorie-rich sources of
food for mammals.
Bolick said humans depend on
flowering plants.
“One-half of the calories con
sumed by humans worldwide come
from the grass family: com, wheat
and rice,” she said.
Thecxhibitwillrcmainon display
on the main floor of Morrill Hall
through May.
r1
Boltek
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