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Solving the Mystery of Seagrass Evolution

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http://dinologue.com/2015/05/solving-the...evolution/

EXCERPT: Plant evolution is important to consider in the evolution of life on Earth and in the sexier study of vertebrate palaeontology, as of course, animal life is tied to plant life. That is especially true in the case of plants that create habitats, as well as food, for many animals. Such is the case with seagrass beds.

Seagrass also happens to be a marine organism that provided an evolutionary conundrum to me this past week. In watching the recent episode, Sand, of Bahama Blue, it referenced seagrass as having evolved 17 million years ago …

This presented a conundrum in my mind, as I knew that fossilized seagrass had been found in Wadi El-Hitan, a 40-million year old ocean in Egypt, and that that seagrass had been one of the main food sources for the ancient dugongs – sea cows that lived there in the late Eocene. The Eocene dates back to between 56 to 33.9 million years ago, so how could a plant that evolved 17 million years ago in the Miocene be there?

Well, as the case may be, marine seagrasses actually evolved 3 or 4 separate times.....
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