Winteraceous pollen in the lower cretaceous of Israel: early evidence of a magnolialean angiosperm family.

Pollen of the primitive angiosperm family Winteraceae has been discovered in the Aptian-Albian of Israel, extending the fossil record of this phylogenetically important family of flowering plants from the uppermost Upper Cretaceous back some 40 million years to the upper Lower Cretaceous. This appears to represent the earliest known record of a magnolialean angiosperm family and is convincing evidence for the existence in the Early Cretaceous of an extant family of angiosperms.