Like the
strange fauna and flora that developed right in and around those bays (and only there and nowhere else on the planet) which look and behave quite alien compared to the rest of the planet. For example,
the Venus flytraps (a meat eating plant) developed only in those Carolina Bays; they are native to that area alone, and nowhere else on the planet.
Venus' flytraps and Carolina Bays
Much to everyone's amazement, Venus' flytraps are not some strange, exotic plant. It is native only to the Carolinas, and, according to Wikipedia, probably within a 60-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina. They are found mostly around crater-like formations known as Carolina Bays, which are located mostly in the same area. Connections to these bays, which are thought to be caused by meteors, only help theories of their alien origins.
What makes this even more interesting is that many of those bays could have been created by atmospheric explosions of fireballs, similarly to the Tunguska event. So what effects might those atmospheric explosions have on living things, besides radiation type changes in the DNA? Incredibly interesting!
The Venus' Flytrap is very interesting indeed. Here's a draft of what will be a future chapter probably:
The
Carolina Bays – ejecta impact sites of the primary cometary impact in
Lake Michigan that started the Younger Dryas - tell a similar story:
Much to everyone's amazement, Venus' flytraps are not some strange, exotic plant.
It is native only to the Carolinas, and, according to Wikipedia, probably
within a 60-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina. They are found mostly around crater-like formations known as Carolina Bays, which are located mostly in the same area.
Connections to these bays, which are thought to be caused by meteors, only help theories of their alien origins.
[1]
While there are about 180 species
[2] of carnivorous plant belonging to the
droseraceraea family,
Venus’ flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) are the only specie representative of the genus Dionaea.
The closest relative
[3] of the Venus’ flytrap is a water plant called waterwheel (
Aldrovanda vesiculosa), which is the only plant sharing the same snap trap mechanism
[4].
Despite sharing a similar snap trap mechanism,
Dionaea Muscipula and Aldrovanda vesiculosa are genetically extremely different:
The genome size of both cultured and wild
Dionaea muscipula is 3.18 Gbp
[5] and thus comparable in size with the human genome. In contrast, the genome sizes obtained for
Aldrovanda vesiculosa are 509 Mbp
[6]
As you can see in the picture below, there are obviously more than a few "random" mutations between the two “cousins”:
© Palfalvi
A (left): Water plant waterwheel (Aldrovanda vesiculosa)
B (right): Ground plant Venus’ flytrap (Dionaea Muscipula)
Given the sudden and localized apparition of Venus’ flytrap out of thin air, it’s not surprising that Charles Darwin euphemistically coined the Venus’ flytrap as “one of the most wonderful in the world”
[7]. He was certainly smart enough not to mention the serious challenges that Venus’ flytraps pose to his dogma.
[1] Everything is elecric Editors. (2015). "Flytraps are Venus’?”.
Everythingiselectric
[2] Christenhusz, M. J. M. & Byng, J. W. (2016). "The number of known plants species in the world and its annual increase". Phytotaxa.
Magnolia Press. 261 (3): 201–217
[3] Gibson, T. C.; Waller, D. M. (2009). "Evolving Darwin's 'most wonderful' plant: ecological steps to a snap-trap".
New Phytologist. 183 (3): 575–587.
[4] Cameron, K. M.; Wurdack, K. J.; Jobson, R. W. (2002). "Molecular evidence for the common origin of snap-traps among carnivorous plants".
American Journal of Botany. 89 (9): 1503–1509.
[5] Gbp stands for Giga base pair, referring to the pairs of bases (nucleotides: A,T,G,C) that constitute DNA.
[6] Palfalvi et al. (2020). “Genomes of the Venus Flytrap and Close Relatives Unveil the Roots of Plant Carnivory”.
Curr Biol. 22;30(12):2312-2320.e5.
[7] Darwin, C. (1875), Insectivorous Plants, London, UK:
John Murray
