Discovery of 17 million-year-old fossilised flower adds to mystery of Tibetan plateau

The discovery of a 17-million-year-old fossilised flower has forced scientists to rethink the history of the Tibetan Plateau, which may have risen faster and more recently than thought.

Scientists found the flower at an altitude of 4,600 metres - thousands of metres above its normal living range, prompting an international team led by researchers from the mainland to calculate the plateau had risen by up to 3,000 metres since the flower was alive.

The timeline for the rise of the Tibetan Plateau is a hotly debated topic, but the discovery appears to rule out the claim by some scientists that significant growth stopped more than 20million years ago.

The collision between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates causes the plateau to rise a little every year, but environmental effects such as wind and rain erode some of this growth.

Many scientists had believed that the force generated by the colliding plates over the past 20 million years was not enough to outweigh the environmental erosion. Some had even argued that the plateau might have been higher in the past than today, with its present height reached as early as 50 million years ago.

But the team's discovery appears to rule this out. They believe the fossilised flower, of a Berberis plant in the Hol Xil Basin, gives an unprecedented insight into the elevation of the regional landscape at the time.