Else Marie Friis

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Else Marie Friis
Born (1947-06-18) 18 June 1947 (age 76)
Holstebro, Denmark
NationalityDanish
Known forPalaeoecology
Scientific career
Fieldsbotany, paleontology
Thesis Microcarpological Studies of Middle Miocene Floras of Western Denmark
Author abbrev. (botany) E.M.Friis

Else Marie Friis (born 18 June 1947) is a Danish botanist and paleontologist. [1] She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus University. [2] Her work has been fundamental in the phylogenetic analysis of angiosperms, with widespread application to reproductive biology. [3]

Contents

Education and early life

The daughter of a bookseller Poul Friis and Marie Møller, she was born in Holstebro, and grew up in Skive, graduating from local school Viborg Katedralskole in 1966. She worked as an au-pair in Paris for a year, becoming interested in geology whilst her brother Henrik was a student in the subject. This inspired her to become an assistant teacher in botany and geology in 1971. [1]

In 1975 she earned a Magister's degree in science and in 1980 a Licentiate's degree in science, both from Aarhus University.

Research and career

Her area of interest is the reproductive biology, phylogeny and palaeoecology of flowering plants based on plant reproductive organs from the Cretaceous period. [1] [4]

Early on in her career she began research into lignite, being involved in fieldwork in the lignite mines in Central Jutland from 1968 to 1972. She was interested in the ecology and climate of Denmark in the middle Miocene, writing her Licentiate thesis on the subject. [5] She became interested in discovering whether early fossil flowering plants could be identified. Fossilised pollen discovered in the 1960s had identified that flowering plants originated during the Cretaceous, but the nature of the plants themselves remained unknown. Most parts of plants, especially the flowers that are needed to identify species, are made of very delicate tissue that is unlikely to become fossilised. It was also considered that the first flowers were likely to be large structures like most modern flowers, adding to the likelihood that they would not become fossilised. The first Cretaceous flower was found by Bruce H. Tiffney in the 1970s in sediment from Martha's Vineyard in the USA, but was seen as an exceptional discovery. Friis and her collaborators made the technical decision to seek very small pieces of charcoal within likely soft rocks through sieving the crumbled sediment, and then using a microscope to view the resulting fragments. This was based on the hypothesis that charcoal formed during natural fires would be much more likely to be preserved intact. In this way she found very small flowers, only a few millimetres in length, that were around 80 million years old. Through her research network that included Peter Crane and Kaj Pedersen, she collaborated with Annie Skarby to locate and identify many early Cretaceous flowers from southern Sweden. In further sediments in the USA and Portugal they were able to local fossilised charcoal flowers that were 120 million years old, extending the origin of flowering plants to earlier in the Cretaceous. These appeared to belong to the Chloranthaceae, a group that turned out to be a major part of the flora at that time but is now only represented by a few species. The technique was subsequently adopted by others to find ancient flowers in sediments around the world. [6]

From 1980 to 1981 she was in London as a British Council Research Scholar, switching research interests following the co-discovery with Swedish scientist Annie Skarby of rare fossilised flowers from the Cretaceous period that were so well preserved that they could be placed within the modern order Saxifragales. [7]

She returned to Aarhus University in 1981, co-publishing a book "The Origins of Angiosperms and Their Biological Consequences" [8] in 1987. She became the head of palaeobotany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm later that year. [3] During her career she has characterised and named over 200 species of fossil flowering plants. [6]


In 1999 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, and has been a visiting professor at Zurich University. [9]

Awards and Associations

Friis is a member of the:

and a

She has received the:

In addition, she was named Geologist of the year in 2005 by the Swedish Association of Scientists. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flowering plant</span> Clade of seed plants that produce flowers

Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae, commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs, grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of broad-leaved trees, shrubs and vines, and most aquatic plants. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ἀγγεῖον / angeion and σπέρμα / sperma ('seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed within a fruit. They are by far the most diverse group of land plants with 64 orders, 416 families, approximately 13,000 known genera and 300,000 known species. Angiosperms were formerly called Magnoliophyta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nymphaeales</span> Order of flowering plants

The Nymphaeales are an order of flowering plants, consisting of three families of aquatic plants, the Hydatellaceae, the Cabombaceae, and the Nymphaeaceae. It is one of the three orders of basal angiosperms, an early-diverging grade of flowering plants. At least 10 morphological characters unite the Nymphaeales. One of the traits is the absence of a vascular cambium, which is required to produce both xylem (wood) and phloem, which therefore are missing. Molecular synapomorphies are also known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gnetophyta</span> Division of plants containing three genera of gymnosperms

Gnetophyta is a division of plants, grouped within the gymnosperms, that consists of some 70 species across the three relict genera: Gnetum, Welwitschia, and Ephedra. The earliest unambiguous records of the group date to the Jurassic, and they achieved their highest diversity during the Early Cretaceous. The primary difference between gnetophytes and other gymnosperms is the presence of vessel elements, a system of small tubes (xylem) that transport water within the plant, similar to those found in flowering plants. Because of this, gnetophytes were once thought to be the closest gymnosperm relatives to flowering plants, but more recent molecular studies have brought this hypothesis into question, with many recent phylogenies finding them to be nested within the conifers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aristolochiaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

The Aristolochiaceae are a family, the birthwort family, of flowering plants with seven genera and about 400 known species belonging to the order Piperales. The type genus is Aristolochia L.

<i>Lysimachia</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Primulaceae

Lysimachia is a genus consisting of 193 accepted species of flowering plants traditionally classified in the family Primulaceae. Based on a molecular phylogenetic study it was transferred to the family Myrsinaceae, before this family was later merged into the Primulaceae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cunoniaceae</span> Family of woody plants

Cunoniaceae is a family of 27 genera and about 335 species of woody plants in the order Oxalidales, mostly found in the tropical and wet temperate regions of the Southern Hemisphere. The greatest diversity of genera are in Australia and Tasmania, New Guinea, and New Caledonia. The family is also present in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Malesia, the islands of the South Pacific, Madagascar and surrounding islands. the family is absent from mainland Asia except from Peninsular Malaysia, and almost absent from mainland Africa apart from two species from Southern Africa. Several of the genera have remarkable disjunct ranges, found on more than one continent, e.g. Cunonia, EucryphiaWeinmannia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bennettitales</span> Extinct order of seed plants

Bennettitales is an extinct order of seed plants that first appeared in the Permian period and became extinct in most areas toward the end of the Cretaceous. Bennettitales were amongst the most common seed plants of the Mesozoic, and had morphologies including shrub and cycad-like forms. The foliage of bennettitaleans is superficially nearly indistinguishable from that of cycads, but they are distinguished from cycads by their more complex flower-like reproductive organs, at least some of which were likely pollinated by insects.

Sir Peter Crane is the current President of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Senior Research Scientist in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. In addition to his work in leading and developing educational and natural history organizations, including the Field Museum in Chicago and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he has had a long career as a professor and researcher in both the U.K. and the United States. He is best known for his work on the origin and early evolution of flowering plants (angiosperms) based on studies of the plant fossil record. His popular writing includes Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot, a book that traces the evolution and cultural history of Ginkgo biloba to the present day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chloranthaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

Chloranthaceae is a family of flowering plants (angiosperms), the only family in the order Chloranthales. It is not closely related to any other family of flowering plants, and is among the early-diverging lineages in the angiosperms. They are woody or weakly woody plants occurring in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Madagascar, Central and South America, and the West Indies. The family consists of four extant genera, totalling about 77 known species according to Christenhusz and Byng in 2016. Some species are used in traditional medicine. The type genus is Chloranthus. The fossil record of the family, mostly represented by pollen such as Clavatipollenites, extends back to the dawn of the history of flowering plants in the Early Cretaceous, and has been found on all continents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cabombaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

The Cabombaceae are a family of aquatic, herbaceous flowering plants. A common name for its species is water shield. The family is recognised as distinct in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group IV system (2016). The family consists of two genera of aquatic plants, Brasenia and Cabomba, totalling six species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydatellaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

Hydatellaceae are a family of small, aquatic flowering plants. The family consists of tiny, relatively simple plants occurring in Australasia and India. It was formerly considered to be related to the grasses and sedges, but has been reassigned to the order Nymphaeales as a result of DNA and morphological analyses showing that it represents one of the earliest groups to split off in flowering-plant phylogeny, rather than having a close relationship to monocots, which it bears a superficial resemblance to due to convergent evolution. The family includes only the genus Trithuria, which has at least 13 species, although species diversity in the family has probably been substantially underestimated.

<i>Archaefructus</i> Extinct genus of herbaceous aquatic seed plants

Archaefructus is an extinct genus of herbaceous aquatic seed plants with three known species. Fossil material assigned to this genus originates from the Yixian Formation in northeastern China, originally dated as late Jurassic but now understood to be approximately 125 million years old, or early Cretaceous in age. Even with its revised age, Archaefructus has been proposed to be one of the earliest known genera of flowering plants.

<i>Lyonia</i> (plant) Genus of flowering plants

Lyonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. There are about 35 species native to Asia and North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesangiospermae</span> One of two clades of flowering plants

Mesangiospermae is a clade of flowering plants (angiosperms), informally called "mesangiosperms". They are one of two main groups of angiosperms. It is a name created under the rules of the PhyloCode system of phylogenetic nomenclature. There are about 350,000 species of mesangiosperms. The mesangiosperms contain about 99.95% of the flowering plants, assuming that there are about 175 species not in this group and about 350,000 that are. While such a clade with a similar circumscription exists in the APG III system, it was not given a name.

Paradinandra suecica is a species of fossil plants from the Cretaceous of Sweden. It is of uncertain placement within the order Ericales, and was described in 2001.

Drewria potomacensis is a Cretaceous megafossil member of the Gnetales, from the Potomac Group, hence its name. It was possibly a shrub. It is the only known species in the genus Drewria.

Pamela Soltis is an American botanist. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Florida, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, principal investigator of the Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and founding director of the University of Florida Biodiversity Institute.

<i>Saururus</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Saururaceae

Saururus is a genus of plants in the family Saururaceae containing two species. Saururus cernuus is native to North America, and Saururus chinensis is native to Asia.

<i>Trithuria inconspicua</i> Species of aquatic plant

Trithuria inconspicua is a small aquatic herb of the family Hydatellaceae that is only found in New Zealand.

The fossil history of flowering plants records the development of flowers and other distinctive structures of the angiosperms, now the dominant group of plants on land. The history is controversial as flowering plants appear in great diversity in the Cretaceous, with scanty and debatable records before that, creating a puzzle for evolutionary biologists that Charles Darwin named an "abominable mystery".

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Else Marie Friis (1947 - )". Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon (in Danish).
  2. "Else Marie Friis - Research - Aarhus University". pure.au.dk. Retrieved 2020-01-20.
  3. 1 2 3 "Else Marie Friis | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  4. 1 2 3 "Else Marie Friis". Swedish Museum of Natural History.
  5. Friis, Else Marie (1980). Microcarpological studies of middle miocene floras of Western Denmark. Aarhus Universitet, Det Naturvidenskabelige Fakultet. ISBN   9780521323574. OCLC   873194510.
  6. 1 2 Crair, Ben (2 January 2023). "The fossil flowers that re-wrote the history of life". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  7. Friis, E. M.; Skarby, A. (June 1981). "Structurally preserved angiosperm flowers from the Upper Cretaceous of southern Sweden". Nature. 291 (5815): 484–486. doi:10.1038/291484a0. ISSN   0028-0836. S2CID   4270901.
  8. Lemoigne, Yves (January 1988). "The origins of angiosperms and their biological consequences". Geobios. 21 (1): 117. doi:10.1016/s0016-6995(88)80037-8. ISSN   0016-6995.
  9. System. "Else Marie Friis - Naturhistoriska riksmuseet". www.nrm.se. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  10. "Medal and Award Winners List | The Palaeontological Association". www.palass.org. Retrieved 2023-12-21.