Almost 40 million years ago a flower bloomed in a Baltic conifer forest. Dripping tree resin encased the petals and pollen, forever showcasing an ephemeral moment in our planet’s past.
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Scientists have taken a fresh look at the unique amber fossil, which was first documented in 1872 as belonging to a pharmacist called Kowalewski in what’s now Kaliningrad, Russia.
“I was more than surprised to see such a large flower inclusion.” At 28 millimeters across, it’s the largest known flower to be fossilized in amber – three times the size of similar fossils. Sadowski extracted and examined pollen from the amber. She found that the flower had been misidentified when it was first studied. “The original genus name of this specimen was Stewartia of the plant family Theaceae.
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