Lingyuanfructus: The First Fossil Angiosperm with Naked Seeds

Unlike gymnosperms with naked ovules, angiosperms are defined and characterized by their enclosed ovules. According to plant evolution theories, angiosperms should be derived from their gymnospermous ancestors, which have naked ovules. Thus, an assumed transitional plant is expected to have started but not yet completed the enclosing of its ovules; specifically, some of its ovules are enclosed while others are not. This unusual expectation is, although rational, paradoxical: If this is so, is the plant a gymnosperm or an angiosperm? To date, such an expectation has never been met by any fossil evidence. The lack of favorable evidence makes the above expectation speculative and leaves evolutionary theorists vulnerable to attacks from their opponents. Here, I report a fossil plant, <i>Lingyuanfructus hibrida</i> gen. et sp. nov., from the Yixian Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of Liaoning, China, that meets this expectation. With young seeds both naked and enclosed in a single specimen, <i>Lingyuanfructus</i> defies any placement among seed plants and blurs the otherwise distinct boundary between angiosperms and gymnosperms, consolidating the foundation for evolutionary theory.