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Ruby E. Stephens, PhD Candidate, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

The world's first flowers were pollinated by insects

Ruby E Stephens, Author provided

Plants existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years before the first flowers bloomed. But when flowering plants did evolve, more than 140 million years ago, they were a huge evolutionary success.

What pollinated these first flowering plants, the ancestor of all the flowers we see today? Was it insects carrying pollen between those early flowers, fertilising them in the process? Or perhaps other animals, or even wind or water?

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