The astonishing connection between the extinction of dinosaurs and the invention of wine
Sometimes seemingly trivial details may tell us more about the most catastrophic or significant events in history. Research has revealed that the extinction of dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid that hit the planet's surface and transformed its biochemical structure. But the apocalyptic event which wiped out an entire species, also gave the world wine. According to IFL Science, scientists inspecting some fossilized grape seeds collected from Colombia, Panama, and Peru which dated back 60 to 19 million years.
It is possibly the oldest sample of grapes found in the Western Hemisphere. and researchers theorize that the proliferation of these grapes came to be after the changes in Earth's environment that followed the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction of dinosaurs. “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,” according to the lead author of the study, Fabiany Herrera who is an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum in Chicago. “The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants.”
“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,” he continued. “This discovery is important because it shows that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, grapes really started to spread across the world.” Herrera's team believes that the disappearance of the dinosaurs eventually reshaped the forest lands and grapes grew among them which eventually spread worldwide and eventually got processed into wine when mankind arrived.
“Large animals, such as dinosaurs, are 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,” Mónica Carvalho, the co-author of the paper and assistant curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology, explained. “In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb up trees, like grapes, around this time,” added Herrera.
Herrera has been researching fossilized grapes for a while now and she made this discovery back in 2022. Herrera and Carvalho were working in the Colombian Andes back then when Carvalho first spotted the fossilized grape. “She looked at me and said, ‘Fabiany, a grape!’ And then I looked at it, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was so exciting,” Herrera explained in his statement. “Grapes have an extensive fossil record that started about 50 million years ago, so I wanted to discover one in South America, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've been looking for the oldest grape in the Western Hemisphere since I was an undergrad student.”
In a press release by Field Museum, Herrera revealed how grapes are really resilient. "They're a group that has suffered a lot of extinction in the Central and South American region, but they also managed to adapt and survive in other parts of the world,” he said. "Studies like this one are valuable because they reveal patterns about how biodiversity crises play out. But the other thing I like about these fossils is that these little tiny, humble seeds can tell us so much about the evolution of the forest," he added.