Newly uncovered fossilized grape seeds, millions of years old, are shedding light on the ancient origins of the modern world’s love for wine, researchers report. A fresh analysis suggests that plants from the grape family became more prominent after the dinosaurs’ extinction, possibly because vines were able to grow with less disturbance in post-extinction forests.
This hypothesis emerged after the discovery of fossil grape seeds dating from 19 to 60 million years ago in present-day Colombia, Panama, and Peru.
While a previously found fossil grape seed in India dates back approximately 66 million years, the newly discovered fossils include the oldest known example of plants from the grape family (Vitaceae Juss) in the Western Hemisphere, according to the study published in Nature Plants.
“These are the oldest grapes ever found in this region, and they’re just a few million years younger than the oldest ones found on the other side of the world,” said Fabiany Herrera, the lead author of the study.
Herrera, who is an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center in Chicago, emphasized the significance of this discovery: “This finding is crucial because it shows that grapes began to spread globally after the dinosaurs’ extinction.”
According to the Field Museum, researchers believe grapes began to appear in the fossil record around 66 million years ago, coinciding with the asteroid impact that caused the mass extinction event that ended the age of dinosaurs.
“We often focus on the dinosaurs because they were the most visibly affected, but this extinction event also had a profound impact on plant life,” Herrera explained in a Field Museum article discussing the research. “The forests were fundamentally altered, which changed the composition of plant species.”
With dinosaurs no longer trampling through forests, more plants could thrive among the trees, according to the study’s authors.
Credit: Photo by Nacho Domínguez Argenta on Unsplash
“We think that if large dinosaurs were roaming through the forests, they likely knocked down trees, keeping the forests more open than they are today,” said Mónica Carvalho, a study co-author and assistant curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology.
Herrera added that the fossil record shows an increase in plants using vines to climb trees, such as grapes, around this time.
However, the journey from these ancient vines to modern wine wasn’t straightforward. Previous research has explored the complex domestication and cultivation of wild grapevines, particularly in Europe.
The Nature Plants study authors clarified that the discovered fossils are distant relatives of grapes native to the Western Hemisphere.
“The fossil record shows that grapes are an incredibly resilient group,” Herrera noted in the Field Museum article. “They’ve faced significant extinction events in Central and South America, yet they’ve managed to adapt and survive in other parts of the world.”
