Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309 USA.
Am J Bot. 2009 Jan;96(1):5-21. doi: 10.3732/ajb.0800150. Epub 2008 Dec 11.
Charles Darwin's "abominable mystery" has come to symbolize just about all aspects of the origin and early evolution of flowering plants. Yet, there has never been an analysis of precisely what Darwin thought was so abominably mysterious. Here I explicate Darwin's thoughts and frustrations with the fossil record of flowering plants as revealed in correspondence with Joseph Hooker, Gaston de Saporta, and Oswald Heer between 1875 and 1881. I also examine the essay by John Ball that prompted Darwin to write his "abominable mystery" letter to Hooker in July of 1879. Contrary to what is generally believed, Darwin's abominable mystery has little if anything to do with the fossil prehistory of angiosperms, identification of the closest relatives of flowering plants, questions of the homologies (and character transformations) of defining features of flowering plants, or the phylogeny of flowering plants themselves. Darwin's abominable mystery and his abiding interest in the radiation of angiosperms were never driven primarily by a need to understand the literal text of the evolutionary history of flowering plants. Rather, Darwin was deeply bothered by what he perceived to be an abrupt origin and highly accelerated rate of diversification of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous. This led Darwin to create speculative arguments for a long, gradual, and undiscovered pre-Cretaceous history of flowering plants on a lost island or continent. Darwin also took refuge in the possibility that a rapid diversification of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous might, if real, have a biological explanation involving coevolutionary interactions between pollinating insects and angiosperms. Nevertheless, although generations of plant biologists have seized upon Darwin's abominable mystery as a metaphor for their struggle to understand angiosperm history, the evidence strongly suggests that the abominable mystery is not about angiosperms per se. On the contrary, Darwin's abominable mystery is about his abhorrence that evolution could be both rapid and potentially even saltational. Throughout the last years of his life, it just so happens that flowering plants, among all groups of organisms, presented Darwin with the most extreme exception to his strongly held notion natura non facit saltum, nature does not make a leap.
查尔斯·达尔文的“可恶谜团”几乎象征了开花植物起源和早期进化的所有方面。然而，从未有人对达尔文认为特别神秘的内容进行过准确分析。在这里，我详细阐述了达尔文在 1875 年至 1881 年期间与约瑟夫·胡克、加斯顿·德萨波特和奥斯瓦尔德·黑尔的通信中对开花植物化石记录的想法和困惑。我还研究了促使达尔文在 1879 年 7 月给胡克写“可恶谜团”信的约翰·鲍尔的文章。与普遍看法相反，达尔文的“可恶谜团”与被子植物的化石史前史、开花植物近亲的鉴定、开花植物定义特征的同源性（和特征转变）问题、或开花植物本身的系统发育几乎没有任何关系。达尔文的“可恶谜团”和他对被子植物辐射的持久兴趣，从来都不是主要由理解开花植物进化历史的文字文本的需要驱动的。相反，达尔文对他认为在白垩纪中期开花植物突然起源和高度加速多样化的现象深感困扰。这导致达尔文为一个失落的岛屿或大陆上开花植物在白垩纪前漫长、缓慢且未被发现的历史创造了推测性的论点。达尔文还寄希望于白垩纪中期开花植物的快速多样化如果真实存在，可能会有涉及传粉昆虫和被子植物共同进化相互作用的生物学解释。然而，尽管几代植物生物学家将达尔文的“可恶谜团”作为他们理解被子植物历史的斗争的隐喻，但有强有力的证据表明，这个谜团与被子植物本身无关。相反，达尔文的“可恶谜团”是关于他对进化既快速又可能甚至是跳跃式的憎恶。在他生命的最后几年，开花植物恰好是所有生物群体中，最极端地违背了他强烈持有的“自然不跳跃”的观点。
