Mysterious 'alien plant' fossil discovered by scientist isn't related to any species past or present

A fossil discovered by scientists has been dubbed an "alien plant" because it’s unlike any species from the past or present.

The first incredible discovery regarding this unusual plant species was found in modern-day Utah back in 1969. It was named Othniophyton elongatum, which translates to “alien plant”. It was believed at the time that the plant could be related to ginseng.

However, more recent analysis has changed this theory. We now know the plant was actually rather unique.

This saga was given a surprising update recently. Steven Manchester, curator of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History, found an unidentified, but well preserved, plant fossil while visiting the University of California.

It had come from the same area as the alien plant leaves, and Manchester’s research team analysed the fossils and concluded they were from the same plant species.

The sample found at UC Berkeley had leaves, flowers and fruits attached, but the specimen retrieved in 1969 did not, as it only had leaves. These features looked different from those of plants related to ginseng.

This illustration is a reconstruction of what the 'alien plant' would have looked like when it was aliveAshley Hamersma, Manchester et al., 2024

Researchers could not match the fossils to any other families of flowering plants, of which there are over 400 families living today. Nor could they link the fossils to extinct families. The research team in 1969 assumed the sample was linked to plants in the ginseng family because they theorised the leaf structure was similar.

However this theorised link to the ginseng family could finally be discarded once the second sample was found, as the research team this time around had a lot more features of the plant to compare to others. The family could not be found.

The plants lived around 47 million years ago and the fossil specimens were excavated from the Green River Formation in eastern Utah. This region was a massive lake ecosystem close to active volcanoes during this time. Because of lake sediment and volcanic ash, the decomposition in bird, fish, reptile and plant remains were very well preserved.

Eventually the Florida Museum of Natural History gained access to new microscopy and artificial intelligence technology that gave researchers a chance to have an even more detailed viewing of the plant fossils.

This species is unique because the stamens — the male reproductive organs — detach after fertilisation, but in the unidentified species, they were still intact.

In a statement shared by the Florida Museum, Manchester said: “Usually, stamens will fall away as the fruit develops. And this thing seems unusual in that it's retaining the stamens at the time it has mature fruits with seeds ready to disperse. We haven't seen that in anything modern.”

It's unclear which group this plant species belongs to, or how much diversity within this extinct group has been lost over time.

In other plant news, researchers have developed an artificial intelligence model that's able to understand the sequences and structure patterns that make up the genetic 'language' of plants in a similar way to how ChatGPT understands human language.

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