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The authors of the paper think those proboscises evolved originally to drink water, and some butterflies and moths then started using them partly to get nectar from horsetails. So, maybe those long mouthparts drove the evolution of flowering plants, rather than the other way around. There's also an offhand reference (as to something that people in the field already know) to "increased herbivory" of insects, with specifics about leaf-eating.
Meanwhile, the Scientific American article also quotes people saying "maybe not" about significant ancient diversification of Lepidoptera, and one who calls the authors' interpretation "widely speculative"; everyone seems to agree that this is a good area for approach for research, and more microfossils would be useful.