great catch, Calvin. But requires a $199 subscription :(

Calvin why don't you summerize for us and I'll save the $199 for some orchids on my wish list :>)

Brooke

I can get the paper...not sure how to post the .pdf though...any thoughts? I can email it to if you want to read it.

It is no surprise that orchids are often subjects in talks of evolution...in fact,Darwin theorized upon looking at an Ang in the wild (Angraecum sesquipedale), that it must be polinated by a long-snouted month/butterfly...he was right, years later they discovered one such insect and named the Madagascan moth was named Xanthopan morgani subspecies praedicta; in his honor.

You can simple copy and paste as text. If there are diagrams, you will have to do it as pictures.

Ooops! I suppose I can access it through my institution. I feel like it's illegal to post the article publicly, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind me sending the article to any friends who happen to e-mail me....hmmm..there's a cool picture of a fly with some pollen stuck on it!

Essentially the abstract says it all. I'm not too familiar with this area of science but essentially what I gathered is that originally, people had trouble dating exactly when orchids arose in evolutionary history because of small sample sizes and a general absence of any fossil material to work with. Estimates ranged from 26 - 110 million years ago. By finding this pollen and it's carrier and being able to identify it as part of the same clade as our modern day ludisia, they applied some fancy computer modeling using DNA samples from various orchid genera to estimate that orchids arose much earlier than generally thought, likely during the late cretaceous around 80 million years ago, and possibly earlier. I'm not too familiar with the molecular evolution analysis techniques they applied but it seems that they used this finding to further refine existing phylogenetic data, so that they were able to form a more accurate of when orchids initially arose. They suspect that additional fossil finds will push this date even further back.

Calvin,
No need to battle with your ethics regarding copyright laws. Leiden Uni already has the article online.

Here is a link that might be useful: Meliorchis caribea Nature Article