Rutgers University botanist Lena Struwe claims to have found a new plant species locked in ancient amber. The delicate flowers are believed to have fallen to the floor of a muggy and tropical forest more than 15 million years ago.

Instead of getting withered away, the flowers were trapped in sticky globs of tree resin and toughened into amber with time. These were then carried to what is now a Caribbean mountain range.

It was in last April last year that Struwe had heard of all this when she opened an email mentioning about the delicate petals trapped in golden splendor. She came to the conclusion that the fragile flowers trapped in amber were new after reviewing scores of known species at the historic collection at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

Struwe named the species Strychnos electri, which is derived from the Greek word amber. Though Strychnos electri has likely been extinct for a long time, scientists every year discover several new species comprising both living and soon-to-be-extinct species. Though animal bones are found preserved many times, it is rare for flowers to be found preserved.

“It is pretty amazing that they have survived so long and they look so incredibly perfect”, Struwe said. “They look like something that fell off one of these lianas yesterday”.

George O. Poinar Jr. from the Oregon State University, who is Struwe’s collaborator, found the two amber fossils. On Monday, Poinar and Struwe announced that the plants they had belonged to a new species, Strychnos electri. This is a far-off cousin of Agatha Christie, the plant that contains poisonous substance strychnine.

“The specimens are beautiful, perfectly preserved fossil flowers, which at one point in time were borne by plants that lived in a steamy tropical forest with both large and small trees, climbing vines, palms, grasses and other vegetation”, said George Poinar, whose work inspired the original Jurassic Park novel.