47,000,000-year-old ‘alien plant’ is baffling scientists as they can’t relate it to any living or extinct species

A fossil first discovered back in 1969 has left scientists dumbfounded as they are forced to forget what they thought they knew about the ‘alien plant’

The fossilized plant leaves, Othniophyton elongatum, translates to ‘alien plant’ in English and was discovered in an abandoned town in Utah.

At the time, scientists came to the conclusion that the extinct plant may be linked to the Ginseng family, a common medicinal root, however a new study has questioned this possibility.

Steven Manchester, curator of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History and Utah fossil has been studying the 47-million-year-old fossil for years and recently published a new study questioning previous conclusions.

During a visit to the paleobotany collection at the University of California, Berkeley, he encountered an exceptionally well-preserved and unidentified plant fossil that had been found in the same area as the alien plant.

A reconstruction of Othniophyton elongatum as it would have appeared when it was alive, complete with leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds (Illustration by Manchester et al., 2024)

In a study published in the journal Annals of Botany, Manchester and his team found, after careful analysis, that the fossils from 1969 and the Berkeley collection represent the same species.

Speaking of the Berkeley fossil, Manchester said: “This fossil is rare in having the twig with attached fruits and leaves. Usually, those are found separately.”

After this, they extensively analysed physical features of the old and new fossil, then methodically searched for any living plant family to which the two of them could belong.

However, they were unable to attribute any of the features, seen on the fossils, to over 400 diverse families of flowering plants alive today as well as a slew of extinct families.

Manchester continued: “There are many things for which we have good evidence to put in a modern family or genus, but you can’t always shoehorn these things.”

He has also noted that the initial researchers had less information to work with, which does make sense since it was found way back in 1969.

The plant family researchers believed the 1969 fossil belonged to based on the informaiton they had at the time (Illustration from Gartenflora, volume 18 (1869))

Without flowers, fruits or branches, they were limited to analysing the shape and vein patterns of the leaves. It was through this they likely attributed the fossil to the ginseng family.

Manchester added: “The two twigs we found show the same kind of leaf attached, but they’re not compound. They’re simple, which eliminates the possibility of it being anything in that family.

“Normally we don’t expect to see that preserved in these types of fossils, but maybe we’ve been overlooking it because our equipment didn’t pick up that kind of topographic relief.”