lpetrich
Contributor
Was some proto-fish smoking pot? It would be hard to do that in the water, and there is a further problem: the ancestors of cannabis plants were freshwater green algae back then.
Aphananthe Planch. (Cannabaceae) flower preserved in the Mexican amber about 23 - 15 million years ago.
Cannabaceae includes Cannabis sativa and also Humulus - hops, often used in making beer.
The next step up is Rosales, and I found Rosids - Reproductive structures, fossil and extant, and their bearing on deep relationships: Introduction
"Among Late Cretaceous rosids, taxa related to Saxifragales, Fagales, and Rosales are particularly common."
Superrosids
Going back further, (super)rosids are eudicots:
Fossil evidence for a herbaceous diversification of early eudicot angiosperms during the Early Cretaceous | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - the Cretaceous Period began about 145 million years ago.
It's difficult to trace the ancestors of flowering plants any further, because there are some fossil plants from back then that are almost but not quite there in some ways.
Seed plants go back some 370 million years (late Devonian), vascular plants some 425 million years ago (late Silurian), and land plants some 460 million years ago (mid-Ordovician).
Aphananthe Planch. (Cannabaceae) flower preserved in the Mexican amber about 23 - 15 million years ago.
Cannabaceae includes Cannabis sativa and also Humulus - hops, often used in making beer.
The next step up is Rosales, and I found Rosids - Reproductive structures, fossil and extant, and their bearing on deep relationships: Introduction
"Among Late Cretaceous rosids, taxa related to Saxifragales, Fagales, and Rosales are particularly common."
- Rosales - rose, strawberry, blackberry, apple, pear, peach, almond, fig, Cannabaceae
- Fagales - oak, beech, birch, walnut, pecan
- Saxifragales - a great variety
SuperrosidsGoing back further, (super)rosids are eudicots:
Fossil evidence for a herbaceous diversification of early eudicot angiosperms during the Early Cretaceous | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - the Cretaceous Period began about 145 million years ago.
It's difficult to trace the ancestors of flowering plants any further, because there are some fossil plants from back then that are almost but not quite there in some ways.
Seed plants go back some 370 million years (late Devonian), vascular plants some 425 million years ago (late Silurian), and land plants some 460 million years ago (mid-Ordovician).