her research network that included Peter Crane and Kaj Pedersen, she collaborated with Annie Skarby to locate and identify many early Cretaceous flowers from southern Sweden. In further sediments in the USA and Portugal they were able to local fossilised charcoal flowers that were 120 million years old, extending the origin of flowering plants to earlier in the Cretaceous. These appeared to belong to the Chloranthaceae, a group that turned out to be a major part of the flora at that time but is now only represented by a few species. The technique was subsequently adopted by others to find ancient flowers in sediments around the world. From 1980 to 1981 she was in London as a British Council Research Scholar, switching research interests following the co-discovery with Swedish scientist Annie Skarby of rare fossilised flowers from the Cretaceous period that were so well preserved that they could be placed within the modern order Saxifragales. She returned to Aarhus University in 1981, co-publishing a book "The Origins of Angiosperms and Their Biological Consequences" in 1987. She became the head of palaeobotany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm later that year. During her career she has characterised and named over 200 species of fossil flowering plants. In 1999 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, and has been a visiting professor at Zurich University. Awards and Associations Friis is a member of the: American Academy of Arts and Sciences Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters Royal Swedish Academy of Science Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, Sweden Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society She has received the: 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 Denmark's Geology Prize 2011 with Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Linnaeus gold medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2014 Knight 1st Class of the Order of the Polar Star In addition, she was named Geologist of the year in 2005 by the Swedish Association of Scientists. References 1947 births Living people People from Holstebro 20th-century Danish botanists Danish paleontologists Aarhus University alumni Members of the Royal Danish