Else Marie Friis facts for kids

Else Marie Friis (born 18 June 1947) is a Danish scientist who studies plants (a botanist) and ancient life forms (a paleontologist). She used to be a professor in the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus University in Denmark. Her important work has helped us understand how flowering plants are related to each other and how they reproduce.

Else Marie's Early Life and School

Else Marie was born in Holstebro, Denmark. Her dad was a bookseller. She grew up in Skive and finished school in 1966. After school, she worked as an au-pair in Paris for a year. During this time, she became interested in geology (the study of Earth's rocks and history) because her brother Henrik was studying it. This interest led her to become an assistant teacher in botany (plant science) and geology in 1971.

She continued her studies at Aarhus University. She earned a science degree in 1975 and another advanced science degree in 1980.

Discovering Ancient Flowers

Else Marie is very interested in how flowering plants reproduce, how they are related, and what their ancient environments were like. She studies plant parts from the Cretaceous period, which was a very long time ago.

Looking for Clues in Lignite

Early in her career, she started researching lignite, which is a type of soft coal. From 1968 to 1972, she worked in lignite mines in Central Jutland, Denmark. She wanted to learn about the environment and climate in Denmark during the middle Miocene epoch. Her research helped her understand if early fossil flowering plants could be found.

The Mystery of Early Flowering Plants

Scientists knew from fossilized pollen that flowering plants first appeared during the Cretaceous period. However, they didn't know what these early plants looked like. Most plant parts, especially delicate flowers, don't usually turn into fossils. People also thought the first flowers would be large, like many modern flowers, making them even harder to find as fossils.

A Breakthrough Discovery

In the 1970s, another scientist found the first Cretaceous flower fossil in the USA. But this was seen as a very rare find. Else Marie Friis and her team decided to try a new method. They looked for very tiny pieces of charcoal in soft rocks. They would sieve (sift) the crumbled rock and then look at the tiny fragments under a microscope. Their idea was that charcoal, formed during natural fires, would be much more likely to stay whole and become fossilized.

Using this method, she found very small flowers, only a few millimeters long, that were about 80 million years old! She worked with other scientists, including Peter Crane and Kaj Pedersen, and with Swedish scientist Annie Skarby. Together, they found many early Cretaceous flowers in southern Sweden.

Finding Even Older Flowers

In other places like the USA and Portugal, they found fossilized charcoal flowers that were 120 million years old. This discovery showed that flowering plants appeared even earlier in the Cretaceous period than previously thought. These ancient flowers seemed to belong to a group called Chloranthaceae. This group was a major part of the plant life back then, but today only a few species exist. Else Marie's special technique was later used by other scientists around the world to find more ancient flowers.

Career Highlights

From 1980 to 1981, Else Marie studied in London. There, she and Annie Skarby found rare fossilized flowers from the Cretaceous period that were so well preserved they could be linked to a modern plant group called Saxifragales.

She returned to Aarhus University in 1981. In 1987, she helped write a book called "The Origins of Angiosperms and Their Biological Consequences." Later that year, she became the head of paleobotany (the study of ancient plants) at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. Throughout her career, she has identified and named over 200 different types of fossil flowering plants.

In 1999, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Uppsala University. She has also been a visiting professor at Zurich University.

Awards and Groups She Belongs To

Else Marie Friis is a member of many important scientific groups, including:

• The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
• The Royal Swedish Academy of Science
• The Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, Sweden
• The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences
• She is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Society

She has received several awards for her amazing work:

• Hans Gram Medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1985
• Nils Rosén Linné Prize in botany from the Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden in 1992
• Rolf Dahlgren Prize in botany from the Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden in 2005
• Sweden's Geologist of the Year in 2007
• Denmark's Geology Prize in 2011 (with Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen)
• Linnaeus gold medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2014
• Knight 1st Class of the Order of the Polar Star
• Lapworth Medal from the Palaeontological Association in 2023