Is Darwin's ‘Abominable Mystery’ still a mystery today?

•The explosive Cretaceous diversification of crown angiosperms is examined.•Our analysis supports a pre-Cretaceous origin of stem angiosperms.•The Cretaceous explosion of angiosperms follows the general dynamics of land biota.•Evidence suggests that Darwin's ‘Abominable Mystery’ is more apparent than real.

Darwin described the Cretaceous diversification and subsequent rapid rise of flowering plants (angiosperms) as an “abominable mystery”: how could they have achieved worldwide ecological dominance by early Paleogene times when the oldest angiosperm fossils are only Cretaceous in age? However, recent phylogenetic and palaeobiogeographical analyses have suggested a much earlier, perhaps Triassic origin for the stem angiosperms. We suggest that the fossil record is accurately reflecting the rapid diversification of the crown angiosperms that molecular data suggests occurred in Cretaceous–early Palaeogene times, and which coincides with similar explosive diversifications that occurred in other parts of the terrestrial biota including insects, birds and mammals. Early, stem angiosperms are poorly represented in the fossil record for a combination of taphonomic and ecological reasons. We conclude that the reported evidence shows that the Darwin's “mystery” is in fact no mystery and confirms that it merely requires an appropriate reading of the fossil record.