The first fossil of a carnivorous plant has been found in Russia, and studied by a team of researchers from Germany.
The first fossil of a carnivorous plant has been found in Russia, and studied by a team of researchers from Germany.
Dated to between 35 million and 47 million years ago, two leaves of the plant were caught in the sap of another tree, and over time it turned into an amber fossil.
According to the study, this carnivorous plant lived by trapping insects on its hairy and sticky leaves.
It is similar to an existing species of Roridula plants that only live in South Africa and which get nourishment not from the trapped insects, but from the capsid bugs that eat them.
Other carnivorous plants like Venus fly traps, or pitcher plants create their own enzymes to break down their prey, but Roridula plants instead live off the excrement from the capsid insects that can live on them without getting stuck.
Biologist Alexander Schmidt lead investigator of the study from the University of Gottingen in Germany is quoted as saying: “Bugs feed on the trapped insects, and their fecal pellets are deposited on the leaf surface, and the leaf surface has a lot of tiny, nanometer-sized gaps, so it has the chance to uptake these nutrients from the bug species into the plant.”
Two leaves were preserved in the fossil, but previous fossil discoveries only included the seeds of carnivorous plants.
