Fossil evidence strongly indicates that the initial phylogenetic diversification of angiosperms during the Early Cretaceous involved many kinds of plants that are now extinct, and suggests that their closest living relatives are among extant angiosperms in the ANA-grade (Amborellales, Nymphaeales, Austrobaileyales), Chloranthaceae, eumagnoliids and early lineages of monocots (Friis et al. 2011). Eudicots also appear early in the diversification of angiosperms, as evidenced by the presence of isolated tricolpate pollen grains in palynological assemblages from around the Barremian-Aptian boundary onwards (Penny 1988, 1991; Doyle 1992; Hughes 1994). Early tricolpate pollen is known from floral remains and in coprolites in early mesofossil floras from Portugal (Friis et al. 2010a, 2011) and there are scattered reports of eudicot leaf fossils from Aptian to mid-Albian strata (e.g. Jud 2015). Eudicots become more common towards the end of the Albian. The earliest pollen grains that can unequivocally be assigned to eudicots are tricolpate, like the pollen produced by many extant early-diverging lineages in this clade. Tricolporate pollen grains, which occur in some basal grade eudicots, but that are more characteristic of core eudicots (Furness et al. 2007), are also present in the fossil record by the end of the Early Cretaceous.