Researchers discovered fossilized seeds representing nine species of grapes, dating from 20 million to 60 million years ago, in Panama, Colombia, and Peru. The oldest of these seeds belonged to plants related to the Vitoideae subfamily, which includes modern commercial grapes.
These discoveries suggest that the ancestor of commercial grapes likely originated in the New World, in the tropical regions of the Americas and the Caribbean, around 60 million years ago.
What’s particularly intriguing is that, just like mammals, grapes started to significantly expand their range after dinosaurs disappeared during the end-Cretaceous extinction event, 66 million years ago. This event drastically altered the preexisting tropical forests of the New World, making way for new rainforests that spurred the diversification of many modern plant and animal groups.
So, after dinosaurs went extinct, both the super ancient ancestors of humans and today’s grape vines had room to evolve to their present form — a match made in heaven, some might say.
“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,” says Fabiany Herrera, an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum in Chicago’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center and the lead author of this new study.
“This discovery is important because it shows that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, grapes really started to spread across the world.”
The ancient history of the grape family
The proudest winemakers will be happy to tell you all about the lore behind where their grapes come from and their history — up until a point. The oldest wineries in the world are typically around a couple of centuries old, such as Château de Goulaine or Schloss Johanisberg, established around 1000 CE.
So, where did these marvelous grapes come from? The prehistory of grapevines is still contentious, but scientists are making progress. In 2023, for instance, researchers performed the most extensive genetic study of its kind, analyzing 2,503 unique vines from domesticated table and wine grapes and 1,022 wild grapevines.
This study revealed that 400,000 and 300,000 years ago, grapes grew naturally across the western and central Eurasian continent. About 200,000 years ago, an ice age climate destroyed vines in the central Mediterranean Sea, effectively separating vine habitats into two isolated regions. The western region included present-day Portugal, Spain, and France while the east stretched, across Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Georgia. Finally, humans first domesticated table grapes (meant for eating, not fermenting into drink) around 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus. These farmers later migrated to Europe where they brought their table wines with them, which they crossbred with the local wild grapevines.
However, this is just the history of vines as it relates to humans. Grape vines, as it turns out, are much older than our lineage. In fact, their evolutionary history is entangled with that of dinosaurs.
How the fall of dinosaurs led to the birth of grapevines
Researchers at the University of Michigan and the Field Museum conducted fieldwork in South and Central America, where they ultimately discovered the fossilized seed of nine new species of fossil grapes spanning from 60 to 19 million years old. The earliest known grape seed fossils were found in India and are 66 million years old — and this is no coincidence.
The timing of the emergence of grape vines in the fossil record coincides with the extinction of dinosaurs, following a devastating asteroid impact off the coast of Mexico. This event would forever change the course of life on the planet — and this includes plants too. “The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants,” Herrera said.
“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,” says Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the paper and assistant curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology.
After the dinosaurs and their bulldozer antics were gone, forests grew more dense, which introduced opportunities for more and more plants that use vines to climb up trees — and that includes grapes. The sudden explosion of new bird and mammal species, which were free to occupy vacant ecological niches, likely greatly aided the spread of grapes by spreading their seeds.
The team examined fossil seeds using advanced imaging techniques, including micro-CT scans and synchrotron radiation X-ray tomography. They compared these fossils with modern grapevine species to establish phylogenetic relationships and reconstruct the ancient biogeography of the Vitaceae family.
Among the fossils is the new species Lithouva susmanii, the earliest evidence of Vitaceae in the Western Hemisphere. This 60-million-year-old vine is distantly related to the commercial grape vine Vitis, suggesting that the origin of wine grapes is in South America.
“The fossil record tells us that grapes are a very resilient order. 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,” says Herrera.
The new findings appeared in the journal Nature Plants.
