The Demise Of The Dinosaurs May Have Helped Grapes And Wine Thrive
After dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, grapes spread around the world. Their extinction may have enabled the fruit to expand its range.
Recently, a group of scientists discovered nine new species of fossil grapes from Panama, Peru, and Colombia.
The remains, which consist of preserved seeds, provide insight into how plants from the grape family, Vitaceae, were distributed following the demise of the dinosaurs.
The nine new species date between 60 and 19 million years ago. One of the species, from the Andes of Colombia, is the earliest known example of plants from the grape family in the Western Hemisphere.
“These are the oldest grapes ever found in this part of the world, and they’re a few million years younger than the oldest ones ever found on the other side of the planet,” Fabiany Herrera, the lead author of the study and an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum in Chicago’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center, said.
The age of the fossils corresponds with the timing of the mass extinction event that wiped out most of Earth’s plant and animal species, including all non-avian dinosaurs.
The extinction event has long been thought to be caused by a giant asteroid that struck the Earth, making conditions on the planet unlivable.
The sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs had an enormous impact on plants, an idea that may not have been explored in depth until now.
“Large animals, such as dinosaurs, were known to alter their surrounding ecosystems. We think that if there were large dinosaurs roaming through the forest, they were likely knocking down trees, effectively maintaining forests more open than they are today,” said Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the study and an assistant curator from the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan.
yrabota – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
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Without the dinosaurs to regulate the density of plants, tropical forests, particularly those in South America, became overgrown.
In this new ecological setting, grape plants began to spread. Around this time, more vining plants started to appear in the fossil record.
Additionally, birds and mammals grew increasingly diverse during this period. These creatures may have helped grape plants scatter their seeds, contributing to the spread of grapes worldwide.
The discovery of the Colombian Andes species, which has been identified as the earliest known grape fossil from the Western Hemisphere, has been dubbed Lithouva susmanii.
According to Gregory Stull with the National Museum of Natural History, the find was significant because the modern grapevine Vitis evolved from it.
Vitis is a genus of flowering plant species that originated in South America. It plays a major economic role today since it is the source of grapes. The grapes can either be consumed directly or used to produce wine.
The study was published in the journal Nature Plants.
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