Is the Origin of Flowering Plants a Mystery?

One researcher describes the origin of angiosperms as a long “academic headache,” and the lead author of this new paper on this fossilized flower comments,

Researchers were not certain where and how flowers came into existence, because it seems that many flowers just popped up in the Cretaceous from nowhere . . . Studying fossil flowers, especially those from earlier geologic periods, is the only reliable way to get an answer to these questions.

God created flowering plants, along with the other plants, on day three of creation week.

But it’s not hard to explain why flowering plants just “popped up” out of nowhere when you start with the correct foundation, God’s Word. God created flowering plants, along with the other plants, on day three of creation week. These flowers were buried during the global flood of Noah’s day. Their location in the fossil record tells us nothing about their origin; it merely gives us more details about the flood and the order in which it buried the creatures and plants of that time.

The “only reliable way,” to use the words of the author quoted above, to answer questions of origins isn’t to dig deeper into the fossil record (which isn’t a record of time anyway). It’s to dig deeper into God’s Word, the eyewitness account of the history of the earth and the universe. Once we have God’s Word as the foundation for our thinking, we have the basis for building the correct worldview and then looking at the observational evidence and making sense of it.

Get More Answers on Answers News

I discussed this item yesterday on Answers News with co-hosts Dr. Georgia Purdom and Bodie Hodge. Answers News is our twice-weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum and broadcast on my Facebook page and the Answers in Genesis Facebook page. We also discussed the following topics:

• Does Planned Parenthood discriminate against pregnant employees?
• New Mexico bill may lead to assisted suicide tourism.
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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.