have a lenient job or transportation. This is unfair.”

Such stories were all too typical in 2014 and will be magnified in 2016—the first presidential election in over 50 years without the full protections of the VRA.

For years, North Carolina was one of the success stories of the voting-rights struggle. In March 1965, when LBJ introduced the VRA, 46.8 percent of black North Carolinians were registered to vote, compared with 96.8 percent of whites. Decades after the passage of the VRA, the gap had narrowed but remained significant. But between 2000 and 2012—after the adoption of key voting reforms like early voting, same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting—black turnout increased by 65 percent and in 2008 and 2012 African-Americans registered and voted at a higher rate than whites for theto rethink everything about angiosperms because of this fossil," said study co-author Xin Wang, a paleobotanist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China.

Missing branches

Much of the natural history of angiosperms, or flowering plants, seems to be missing from the fossil record. According to fossils, the first plants on land were mosses, which emerged about 425 million years ago. The gymnosperms — a group that includes cycads, gingkoes and pine trees — were next, followed by ferns. Then, about 125 million years ago, angiosperms and their flowers sprang forth during the Cretaceous period, as fully formed as Aphrodite. Within 30 million years, angiosperms would dominate the Earth.

Botanists have long wondered how angiosperms and flowers could suddenly flourish without leaving any traces of their ancestry. Charles Darwin