30 million year old fossil flowers found preserved in amber

New York: Researchers have discovered the first ever fossil specimens of an "asterid", a family of flowering plants that gave us everything from the potato to tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee.

The 20-30 million-year-old fossil flowers were found perfectly preserved in a piece of amber from prehistoric jungles of what is now the Dominican Republic. These flowers, however, came from the dark side of the asterid family; they belong to the genus Strychnos, which ultimately gave rise to some of the world's most famous poisons, including strychnine and curare.

Poisons that would later find their way into blow-gun weapons, rat control appear to have had some of their ancestral and biological roots in these flowers, the researchers said. "The specimens are beautiful, perfectly preserved fossil flowers, which at one point in time were borne by plants that lived in a steamy tropical forest with both large and small trees, climbing vines, palms, grasses and other vegetation," said George Poinar, Jr Professor at Oregon State University in the US.