60-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Found in Colombia
Jul 2, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro
Paleobotanists have described nine new species of the grape family Vitaceae on the basis of 60- to 19-million-year-old fossil seeds discovered in four Neotropical paleofloras. These include Lithouva susmanii from Colombia, a new species that provides the earliest evidence of Vitaceae in the western hemisphere.
It’s rare for soft tissues like fruits to be preserved as fossils, so scientists’ understanding of ancient fruits often comes from the seeds, which are more likely to fossilize.
The earliest known grape seed fossils were found in India and are 66 million years old.
“We always think about the animals, the dinosaurs, because they were the biggest things to be affected, but the extinction event had a huge impact on plants too,” said Dr. Fabiany Herrera, a paleobotanist at the Field Museum.
“The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants.”
Dr. Herrera and his colleagues hypothesize that the disappearance of the dinosaurs might have helped alter the forests.
More:
https://www.sci.news/paleontology/cenozoic-grape-seeds-13065.html
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