GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Joint research between Florida Museum of
Natural History and Chinese scientists to discover and interpret
the world’s earliest known flowering fossil is the subject of a
PBS NOVA documentary, “First Flower,” which debuts at 8 p.m.
April 17. The origin of flowers is one of botany’s deepest
mysteries, and in the NOVA documentary, Florida Musuem
paleobotanist David Dilcher guides viewers through segments of
the amazing story of the evolution of flowers. “There’s no doubt
about it, flowers are all about sex,” said Dilcher, a graduate
research professor and paleobotany curator at the Florida Museum
and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The search for
the world’s first flower drew Dilcher to a remote Chinese lake
where colleague Sun Ge of Jilin University in Changchun, China,
discovered a 125 million-year-old fossil that scientists believe
is the earliest known flower. Although the fossil lacked the
aesthetic petals associated with modern flowers, Dilcher
recognized the plant stalk h