Early Cretaceous landscape. Illustration of typical plants and trees in and around a river and swamp during the Early Cretaceous, an epoch of the Earth's history that lasted from around 145 million years ago to 100 million years ago. Plants that existed during the Cretaceous included conifers such as Araucaria, flowering plants (which had only recently evolved), ferns, mosses, horsetails, swamp cypresses, and some broadleaf trees.