- Without dinosaurs to trample the trees, vine plants like grapes flourished
- READ MORE: Asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago
Next time you open a bottle of wine, it might be worth raising a glass to the dinosaurs.
That’s because their extinction, caused by a large asteroid, paved the way for the spread of grapes, a new study suggests.
The research shows that the death of prehistoric reptiles allowed more trees to grow, which meant that grape vines could flourish.
A team from the Field Museum in Chicago has discovered fossil grape seeds dating between 60 and 19 million years ago in Colombia, Panama and Peru.
One of these species represents the earliest known example of plants from the grape family in the Western Hemisphere, and the seeds help show how the grape family evolved.
It is now well known that the dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub impact event – a falling asteroid or comet that crashed into a shallow sea in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico about 66 million years ago (picture photo)
About 66 million years ago, an asteroid larger than Mount Everest crashed into Earth, killing three-quarters of all life on the planet, including the dinosaurs.
The consequences allowed small mammals and some birds to flourish – and laid the groundwork for grapes to flourish.
Fabiany Herrera, lead author of the study, said: “These are the oldest grapes ever found in this part of the world and are several million years younger than the oldest ever found on the other side of the planet.
“This discovery is important because it shows that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, grapes really began to spread around the world.”
Lithouva from Colombia is the earliest fossil grape from the Western Hemisphere, about 60 million years old. The upper figure shows fossils accompanied by CT reconstruction. The bottom shows the artist’s reconstruction
Researchers said it’s no coincidence that grapes first appeared in the fossil record around the same time the Chicxulub asteroid hit Earth.
They suggest that the extinction of the dinosaurs may have helped change the forests, because the large species were likely to knock down trees as they roamed.
Without the big dinosaurs to cut them down, the forests became more densely populated with layers of trees – which then allowed vine plants like grapes to climb up.
Diversification of birds and mammals in the years after the mass extinction may have also helped grapes spread their seeds, the researchers said.
Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the paper, which holds the oldest grape seed fossil found in the Western Hemisphere
“We always think about the animals, the dinosaurs, because they were the biggest things that were affected, but the extinction event also had a big impact on the plants,” Dr Herrera said.
‘The forest restored itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants.
“In the fossil record, we start to see more plants using vines to climb trees, like grapes, around this time.”
The findings were published in the journal Nature Plants.
KILLING THE DINOSAURS: HOW A CITY-SIZED ASTEROID WIPPED OUT 75 PERCENT OF ALL SPECIES OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS
About 66 million years ago, the non-bird dinosaurs became extinct and more than half of the world’s species became extinct.
This mass extinction paved the way for the rise of mammals and the appearance of humans.
Asteroid Chicxulub is often cited as a possible cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
The asteroid crashed into a shallow sea in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The collision released a huge cloud of dust and soot that caused global climate change, wiping out 75 percent of all animal and plant species.
The researchers claim that the soot needed for such a global catastrophe could only have come from a direct impact on rocks in the shallow waters around Mexico, which are particularly rich in hydrocarbons.
Experts believe that within 10 hours of the impact, a massive tsunami hit the Gulf Coast.
About 66 million years ago, the non-bird dinosaurs became extinct and more than half of the world’s species became extinct. Asteroid Chicxulub is often cited as a possible cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (stock image)
This caused earthquakes and landslides in areas as far away as Argentina.
While investigating the event, researchers found small particles of rock and other debris that were shot into the air when the asteroid crashed.
Called spherules, these tiny particles covered the planet in a thick layer of soot.
Experts explain that the loss of light from the sun caused a complete collapse in the water system.
This is because the phytoplankton base of almost all aquatic food chains would have been eliminated.
It is believed that more than 180 million years of evolution that brought the world to the Cretaceous point was destroyed in less than the life of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is about 20 to 30 years.