Oleananes is the name given to chemicals produced by many
flowering plantThe flowering plants or angiosperms are the most diverse group of land plants. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms are the only extant groups of seed plants...
s, which have a suppressing effect on some insect pest organisms. Technically they are oleanane triterpanes.
They are considered a key marker differentiating flowering plants from other life, and have been used in the effort to study their
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
which is as of yet poorly documented in the fossil record.
These compounds appear to have been shared by a group of plants called
gigantopteridGigantopterids is the name given to fossils of a group of plants existing in the Late Permian, until some 250 million years ago. Gigantopterids were among the most advanced land plants of the Paleozoic and disappeared soon after the massive Permian–Triassic extinction event 251.4 million years ago...
s, which lived twice as long ago as the oldest known flower fossils.
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Oleananes is the name given to chemicals produced by many
flowering plantThe flowering plants or angiosperms are the most diverse group of land plants. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms are the only extant groups of seed plants...
s, which have a suppressing effect on some insect pest organisms. Technically they are oleanane triterpanes.
They are considered a key marker differentiating flowering plants from other life, and have been used in the effort to study their
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
which is as of yet poorly documented in the fossil record.
These compounds appear to have been shared by a group of plants called
gigantopteridGigantopterids is the name given to fossils of a group of plants existing in the Late Permian, until some 250 million years ago. Gigantopterids were among the most advanced land plants of the Paleozoic and disappeared soon after the massive Permian–Triassic extinction event 251.4 million years ago...
s, which lived twice as long ago as the oldest known flower fossils. They may have been close relatives of the flowering plants, moving the divergence of the flowering plant lineage back to more than 250 million years ago. However oleanane is also recorded from ferns.
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