Mother of all blooms: is this what the last common ancestor of flowers looked like?

With no fossil flowers older than 130m years, their evolution has long been a mystery. A new structural discovery provides an important piece of the puzzle

Delicate and upturned, with curving petals arranged in threes, it looks like the subject of a Monet painting. In fact, it is what scientists believe the bloom of the last common ancestor of all living flowers looked like.

Flowering plants - or angiosperms - are thought to make up about 90% of all living land plants. There are more than 300,000 different species on the planet, from tiny forget-me-nots to glorious magnolias.