New Scientist
Image: Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Leonardo da Vinci is often credited with producing an early helicopter design – but trees came up with rotating flying machines at least 270 million years before him. The strategy wasn’t an instant evolutionary success, though.
We think of plants as spending their lives rooted to the ground, yet they were actually one of the earliest life forms to develop wings. Seeds with pairs of wings, allowing them to glide, date back at least 370 million years.
About 100 million years later, conifer trees evolved a new way to fly: the helicopter spin. Their seeds began to feature a single wing, which sends them into a tailspin as they fall. This slows the seeds’ flight and increases their chances of catching a breeze and travelling some way from the parent tree, meaning the seedlings are more likely to develop without having to compete with the parent for light and nutrients.
But the ploy got off to an unpromising start. Last year, Cindy Looy and Robert Stevenson at the University of California in Berkeley noticed that the seeds of the earliest known helicoptering conifer – an extinct species called Manifera talaris – typically didn’t carry just one wing. Like some other early conifer seeds, they had two. Read more on newscientist.com…
