(Poinar, Historical Biology, 2021)
Nature ScienceAlert has a story about a pine cone preserved in amber. The fossil, which dates to about 40 million years ago during the Eocene, shows a rare form of parental care in plants. The seeds in the pine cone can be seen to be germinating and sprouting greenery before the cone has fallen to the ground. This rare "behavior" is called "precocious germination", or "seed viviparity". See all the details in a paper in the journal Historical Biology.
Usually, pine cones fall to the ground and then open up when the climate becomes warm and dry, releasing their seeds into the soil, where they then germinate on their own.
The germination of seeds and the growing of seedlings from within the parent plant is what scientists call 'precocious germination', or 'seed viviparity'. This animal-like upbringing is usually only observed in flowering plants, and even then, it occurs in less than 0.1 percent of species.
Among gymnosperms, like conifers, it seems all but nonexistent.
That's what makes this new amber deposit so special. The images below show several embryonic stems bursting through the female parent cone.
