{
  "id": 14420189,
  "title": "Why are there so many plants? New research reveals two key phases in Earth’s past",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/14/why-are-there-so-many-plants-new-research-reveals-two-key-phases-in",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-14T09:11:23.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Conversation AU",
    "slug": "the-conversation-au",
    "url": "https://theconversation.com/why-are-there-so-many-plants-new-research-reveals-two-key-phases-in-earths-past-293347"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Plants are essential for life on Earth, forming the foundation of most ecosystems. Flowering plants, in particular, are the most productive and diverse group of land plants, covering at least 350,000 species. Over millions of years, these plants have evolved intricate relationships with animals, fungi, and bacteria, leading to a vast array of specialized functions.\n\nThe exact reasons why flowering plants came to dominate ecosystems remain unclear, though their rise coincided with a period of significant global warming. The Cretaceous Period, approximately 100 million years ago, saw flowering plants begin to replace older plant groups that had dominated land for 200 million years. However, researchers have found that new, diverse plant types emerged during both warm and cool climates throughout Earth's history.\n\nA new study published in Nature Plants analyzed fossilized pollen and spores to better understand the relationship between climate and plant diversity. The researchers compiled data from over 60,000 fossils and applied statistical methods to overcome biases in the fossil record. This allowed them to generate revised estimates of fossil diversity for successive time periods throughout the past 130 million years.\n\nThe findings revealed that major changes in land plant groups – both extinctions and new species appearing – coincided with the warmest climates. Cooler periods were marked by minimal change. The study concluded that new land plant species emerged mostly during two intervals of globally extremely warm climate. These warmest greenhouse climates lasted a few million years and simultaneously destroyed and promoted plant diversity when considered over million-year timescales.\n\nWhile other factors, such as interactions between plant groups and geographic isolation, could have influenced plant evolution, climate change emerged as the primary driver of land plant diversity. The patterns observed in flowering plants were also evident in conifers, ferns, and mosses, across different latitudes.\n\nThe study emphasizes that extremely warm climates not only cause extinctions but also create conditions for the evolution of new plant species. However, the current human-driven warming is occurring much faster than the warming during the two greenhouse phases identified. As a result, human-driven warming is likely to cause major plant extinctions more rapidly than past events. While extinction will eventually be replaced by new species, the timescale for evolution is much longer than the timeframe in which we have the power to prevent species loss by addressing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.",
  "summary": "Extreme greenhouse events in the past killed many plants – but also gave rise to new ones.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}