Petrified grape seeds were discovered by scientists by accident. This paleobotanical finding will fundamentally change their understanding of the post-dinosaur era and the origins of plant life.
The seeds would have demonstrated what life was like following the devastating event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. They are the oldest of their kind to be found in the Western Hemisphere.
The Grape Revolution in the New World
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The research indicates that the seeds range in age from 60 to 19 million years old, as reported in the journal Nature Plants. The oldest species, known as Lithouva, is the earliest known member of the grape family in the Americas.
It was discovered in Colombia. Fabiany Herrera, an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum in Chicago, spearheaded this important discovery.
She emphasizes the significance of these fossils in understanding how grapes started to spread over the world after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
A Resurrected Forest
Apart from wiping off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the mass extinction event had a noteworthy impact on flora.
Scientists speculate that because there were fewer large dinosaurs, forests were able to grow denser, with more layers of plants forming an understory and a canopy.
The grape family may have flourished and expanded in a supportive environment thanks to this alteration in the forest's structure.
Large animals like dinosaurs would have kept more open forests by uprooting trees, according to Mónica Carvalho, co-author of the study and assistant curator at the University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology.
Their extinction made room for a denser forest ecology, which would have helped grapevines proliferate.
Evolution and Extinction: The Relationship
The extinction event is well-known for both the ecological potential it produced and its immediate devastating effects. The recently found grape seeds serve as evidence of life's adaptability and tenacity.
The woodlands changed when the dinosaurs disappeared, bringing with them chances for different plant species to proliferate.
The results of the study suggest that the grape family, which currently comprises over 800 species, most likely exploited these newly created ecological niches.
Since the thick forests offered climbing vines like grapes the perfect environment, they were able to proliferate and become an important part of the ecosystem.
As a result, the development of the grape family or Vitaceae, as scientists refer to it-became a fascinating subject that revealed the true history of this complex assemblage.
There are fourteen genera and more than 900 species in the grape family. While some species in this family, such as those in the genera Parthenocissus, Ampelopsis, and Vitis, are mostly found in temperate zones, many other species in this family are dominating lianas in lowland tropical forests.
Vitis-Ampelocissus clade, which includes about 180 species.
Ampelopsis-Rhoicissus clade, with 43 species.
Parthenocissus-Yua clade, comprising 15 species.
The core Cissus clade is the largest, with about 300 species.
Cayratia-Tetrastigma-Cyphostemma clade, which includes around 350 species
These clades therefore hold deep relationships within the grape family and show their extensive diversification over millions of years.
Relations concerning this were supported by robustness derived from transcriptome data of different species of the Vitaceae family.
The diversification of the grape family is also tightly linked with the ecological changes following the mass extinction event 66 million years ago.
With large dinosaurs gone, denser forests and more layers of vegetation could have formed new niches for plants like grapevines to flourish and further diversify.
More than that, the diversification of birds and mammals during the millions of years after mass extinction helped the grapes, as they spread the seeds of grapes, making the grape family more widespread in its area of existence and developing into more varieties.
The finding of these ancient grape seeds serves as a reminder of how intertwined all life is on Earth and how improbable its evolution might be.
The seeds provide a window into a previous world that has influenced the present in ways that we are still learning about.
