Madrid. A 3D model of a 407-million-year-old plant fossil overturns thinking about leaf evolution and provides new insights into mathematical patterns in plants.
The new study found that the leaves of ancient plants had a particular type of spiral compared to today’s. This negates a long-held theory of the development of these spirals, indicating that they evolved in two distinct ways.
Whether it’s the vast eddy of a hurricane or the intricate spirals of the DNA double helix, these shapes are common in nature and most can be described by the famous mathematical series of the Fibonacci sequence, named after the Italian mathematician Leonardo. Fibonacci.
That sequence forms the basis for many of nature’s most efficient and amazing patterns, the University of Edinburgh reported.
Spirals are common in plants, and Fibonacci spirals make up more than 90 percent of them. Sunflower heads, pineapples, and succulents include these distinctive whorls on their flower petals, leaves, or seeds.
Why Fibonacci spirals, also known as nature’s secret code, are so common in plants has puzzled scientists for centuries, but their evolutionary origin has been largely overlooked. Based on their extensive distribution, they were long assumed to be an ancient feature that evolved in and were highly conserved in the earliest land plants.
However, an international team, led by the University of Edinburgh, toppled that theory with the discovery of non-Fibonacci spirals in a 407-million-year-old plant fossil.
Using digital reconstruction techniques, the researchers produced the first 3D models of leafy shoots in the fossil. Asteroxylon mackiei, member of the first group that type of plants.
The exceptionally preserved fossil was found at the famous Rhynie Chert site, a Scottish sedimentary deposit near the village of Rhynie in Aberdeenshire.
The site contains evidence of some of the planet’s earliest ecosystems, when land plants first evolved and gradually began to cover Earth’s rocky surface making it habitable.
The findings revealed that the leaves and reproductive structures in Asteroxylon mackiei they were most commonly arranged in non-Fibonacci spirals, rare in plants today.
This transforms scientists’ understanding of Fibonacci spirals in land plants. He indicates that they were common in ancient mosses and that the evolution of leaf helices split off into two distinct paths.
The leaves of ancient mosses had a completely different evolutionary history than the other major groups of plants today, such as ferns, conifers, and flowering plants.
The team created the 3D model of Asteroxylon mackiei, which went extinct over 400 million years ago, by digital artist Matt Humpage, using digital rendering and 3D printing.
The research was published in the journal Science.
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