New species of ancient tropical flower found in amber from the Dominican Republic

The discovery of a new species of ancient flower beautifully preserved in amber indicates that ancestors of today's daisies, mints and tomatoes flourished in Caribbean jungles up to 45 million years ago. The two flower fossils, found in the Dominican Republic, will help scientists understand how asterids — one of the world's three major evolutionary groups of flowering plants — spread around the globe. The amber formed sometime between 15 and 45 million years ago in a geological period known as the mid-tertiary, long before the Americas were joined by the Panama land bridge.