Beardor

Thanks guys, big fan of your work. My wife and I were wondering if you’d put together a public exhibit there yet and I see now that it opened November 1st which was faster than I’d expected. So we’ll be down soon to check it out. I’m a plant guy, member of Colorado Native Plant Society, DBG, etc so I’m pretty interested in the legume you found dating 700K after the event. I skimmed your recent Science paper and it seems as far as what’s been found worldwide so far the evolution of FABACEAE can’t be pinned down currently to tighter than the Western Hemisphere. Is that right and do you think it can be made more specific geographically in the future, like with ASTERACEAE and CACTACEAE?

Best of luck on that work and thanks for the answer. Let me ask a slightly different way since you’d mentioned genetic/molecular phylogenies… Is there any reason currently to think that the basal/stem ancestor of FABACEAE evolved before the event? Or do we think it more likely that the event opened up all these empty niches which weird mutations like ten stamens nine fused plus legumes could them successfully fill? I don’t know how precisely any molecular ’clocks’ that would inform such work might be in answering such a question. Thanks!