The scientists at the Oregon State University have found a 100 million-year-old specimen of grass that could contest to be the oldest on earth. The specimen was found in Myanmar, preserved in amber.

The evolutionary age of grass has been intensively studied. Previously, the earliest dated grasses have been maximum 55 million-years old but the latest finding will push it to 100 million-years. The research has thus, backtracked the grass evolution to the Late Cretaceous period.

The scientists have informed that the amber contained ‘spikelet’, which is a grass in its flowering state along with a cluster of fossilized ergot, which is a major ingredient in LSD. The findings can be of interest to scientists for drawing further inferences about the evolutionary processes in plants and fungi.

However, the methods used by the Oregon researchers have been questioned. Since amber specimens can be unique, scientists used noninvasive methods to determine the type of grass found. Other members of the scientific community have accused these non invasive test methods of producing less rigorous conclusions. They argue that the Oregon test results are inconclusive.

Catch up with the June issue of the EARTH Magazine as it brings forth another aspect of science behind these headlines. It discusses if the discovery of these amber specimen dating back to 100 million years would mean that dinos were potentially dining on hallucinogens and grass!

The issue also includes feature stories on how modern anthropology is redefining the story of human evolution plus a light-hearted investigation into how the film industry portrays geologists.