Wine drinkers may have dinosaurs to thank after 60M-year-old grape fossil seeds are found by scientists
Scientists found grape seed fossils from 60 million years ago during a dig in South America. They believe dinosaurs may be to thank for the regrowth and evolution of seeds.
A group of scientists with Chicago's Field Museum recently discovered grape fossil seeds that could connect dinosaurs to today's numerous wine offerings.
The South America study found nine new species of fossil grapes dating back to at least 19 million years ago — with the oldest one found in a 60-million-year-old rock.
Dr. Fabiany Herrera, assistant curator of paleobotany at The Field Museum, led the study.
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The discovery proved that grapes spread across the world after the extinction of the dinosaurs, as a press release noted.
"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," Herrera said in the release.
The seeds found in Colombia, Panama and Peru could be anywhere between 19 and 60 million years old, according to the press release.
Dr. Monica Carvalho, an assistant curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology and the study’s co-author, said that years ago, dinosaurs were likely knocking down trees while moving through the forests — ultimately leading ecosystems to die out.
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"We think that if there were large dinosaurs roaming through the forest, they were likely knocking down trees, effectively making forests more open than they are today," she said in a media statement.
However, once dinosaurs became extinct some 66 million years ago, plants re-grew in areas in South America — and trees formed in close quarters, said Herrera.
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"In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb up trees, like grapes, around this time," he said.
He explained further why he wanted to discover the "needle in a haystack" in South America.
"I’ve been looking for the oldest grape in the Western Hemisphere since I was an undergrad student," he said.
Herrera added that Carvalho was the one who found the first grape fossil.
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He said she yelled, "Fabiany, a grape!"
He said, as the press release stated, "I looked at it [and] I was like, ‘Oh my God.’"
Carvalho also said, "In excavating the fossil record in the New World tropics, we found seeds that are related to the grape family that date back to 60 million years ago. That led us to revise the fossil record of grapes in the New World," according to the University of Michigan's website.
She added, "The oldest seed we found is closely related to the large group that gave rise to commercial grapes, to the subfamily Vitoideae."
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"We have this rich but previously poorly known fossil record for grapes in the New World, and what we’re seeing is this family has a complex history of extinction and dispersal in the New World," she also said, according to the same source.
After conducting CT scans, the scientists were able to confirm the fossil based on shape, size and other unique features, according to the press release.
After the first fossil was found, scientists found eight other new types of fossil grapes in the South American region.
Carvalho said the new study fleshes out the history of grapes in the Americas and Caribbean, according to the University of Michigan's website.
"There was a very large gap in the fossil record of grapes, after the extinction of dinosaurs. By about 50 million years ago, we see fossil grapes in North America and Europe," she said.
"At the time, when the planet was warmer, grapes had a wider distribution in high, northern latitudes, but we didn’t really know much about the history of this group in tropical latitudes. That’s where our work comes in."
Fox News Digital reached out to the study authors for further comment.
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is one of the largest museums of its kind in the world.
California, the state that's home to the highest population in the U.S. and the most vineyards in the nation, consumed the most wine in 2021, at over 155 million gallons, according to VinePair, which cited other sources as well.
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In second place was Florida, having consumed 83.2 million gallons, and Texas took third with 65.6 million gallons.
The U.S. is home today to nearly 11,700 wineries, according to the Wines Vines Analytics Winery Database.