30-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Fruit Discovery Rewrites Australian Plant Evolution

An extraordinary discovery of 30-million-year-old fossilized fruit in rural central Queensland is prompting scientists to rethink the evolutionary history of plants in Australia. Initially mistaken for lizard skin, the exceptionally preserved fossils were eventually identified as belonging to the Melastomataceae family, marking the first fossil record of this family in Australia or the ancient supercontinent of eastern Gondwana.

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It was an unusual discovery because when we first found it, it looked a bit like lizard skin.

The find also led to the identification of a new genus and species, named Capella raulingsii, previously unknown to science. Dr. Andrew Rozefelds, principal geoscience scientist at the Queensland Museum, stated that the fossil evidence suggests these plants were already present in Australia tens of millions of years before the continent's contact with Southeast Asia. This contradicts recent molecular data that proposed a migration from Southeast Asia.

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I just went, 'It can't be', because when you get plants, you don't tend to get vertebrates as well.

"These fossils show that members of the Melastomataceae were growing in Australia tens of millions of years before the continent made contact with South-East Asia," Dr. Rozefelds explained. "It provides the first concrete evidence these plants were part of eastern Gondwana's ancient rainforests, and it forces us to rethink the historical biogeography of the entire family."

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We were faced with a plant we've never seen before.

Anita Milroy, a co-author from the University of Queensland, noted that around 30 million years ago, the area where the fossils were found would have been a rainforest, with some living relatives of the plants still existing in the Daintree region today. Milroy utilized synchrotron imaging, a high-intensity X-ray technique, to examine the internal anatomy of the fruits without damaging the specimens, showcasing a modern approach to paleobotany research.

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The most recent molecular data suggested that this family of plants migrated into Australia from South-East Asia.