Cenozoic Flora
The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, or the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects. At 35 Ma, grasses evolved from among the angiosperms. About ten thousand years ago, humans in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East develop agriculture. Plant domestication begins with cultivation of Neolithic founder crops. This process of food production, coupled later with the domestication of animals caused a massive increase in human population that has continued to the present. In Jericho (modern Israel), there is a settlement with about 19,000 people. At the same time, Sahara is green with rivers, lakes, cattle, crocodiles and monsoons. At 8 ka, Common (Bread) wheat (Triticum aestivum) originates in southwest Asia due to hybridisation of emmer wheat with a goat-grass, Aegilops tauschii. At 6.5 ka, two rice species are domesticated: Asian rice, Oryza sativa, and African rice Oryza glaberrima.
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Plant Evolution
Famous quotes containing the word flora:
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)