While many characters have been used to define the nature of the angiosperms in living plants, the list must be reduced to a single character that can be found in the fossil record in order to proceed with our search for the earliest flowering plants. That single character should be the closed carpel (functionally or morphologically) as identified from the female reproductive While many characters have been used to define the nature of the angiosperms in living plants, the list must be reduced to a single character that can be found in the fossil record in order to proceed with our search for the earliest flowering plants. That single character should be the closed carpel (functionally or morphologically) as identified from the female reproductive