If you're planning on plying your mother with some Mother's Day blossoms this weekend, you can go to the grocery store and pick out a bouquet. But, if you want more than some nice aesthetic choices, say, for example, you want to know where your lilies figure in to the history of life on earth, you might talk to our guest, Sir Peter Crane. He's a professor in the department of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, and the former director of the Field Museum. The evolutionary biologist featured in a Nova documentary called “The First Flower.” The show recounts scientists' search through 125-million year-old rock and prehistoric sediment, in hopes of finding the earliest flowering plants. We've reached Sir Peter Crane at the University of Vienna in Austria to get a little of the back story.
The Nova episode “The First Flower” re-airs tonight at 8:00 on Channel 11.
Music Button: Juno Reactor, “Las Vegas Future Past”, from the CD Gods & Monsters, (Metropolis records)