Carnivore fossils 40 million years old

Fossils of a carnivorous plant are found in Baltic amber pieces dating to about 40 million years old.

>>>The ultimate hidden carnivorous plants

Scientists from the University of Göttingen, Germany, first found fossils of carnivorous plants in amber near Kaliningrad, Russia. According to a group report published on December 1 in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences, the fossil may belong to the Roridulacea carnivorous family , dating from 35 to 47 million years.

A fossilized fossil tree in the Baltic amber.(Photo: Alexander Schmidt / University of Gottingen)

"This is the first discovery of a carnivorous plant fossil of this type. Most carnivorous plants are not stored as fossils, because they are not made of wood and decompose quickly ," Discovery News quoted Professor Alexander Schmidt, head of the research team, said.

Fossilized leaves have multicellular glands, or tentacles and single-celled hair that characterize the leaves of the Roridula tree, endemic to the Cape of Good Hope flora, South Africa. Roridula traps fly-sized insects with adhesives on leaves and relies on some symbiotic species to digest prey.

The Roridulacea family is thought to have originated in Africa and was isolated after the supercontinent Gondwana (including modern-day Africa, South America, Madagascar, India, Australia, the Middle East and Antarctica) separated leave each other about 180 million years ago.

This finding could help researchers to learn more about the evolution of organisms and habitats during the Eocene period (more than 35 million years ago). During this period, mixed forests, flowering plants, carnivorous plants in the Baltic coastal areas lived in poor nutrient environments and uneven distribution of habitats.