Mónica Carvalho, assistant curator at the UM Museum of Paleontology, uncovered a 60-million-year-old grape seed fossil in the Colombian Andes during 2022 fieldwork. This find, the oldest in South America, is part of a broader study revealing how grapes spread globally after the dinosaurs’ extinction.
Published in Nature Plants, the research highlights fossilized seeds from nine grape species, dating back 20–60 million years, found across Panama, Colombia, and Peru. These fossils, linked to the Vitoideae subfamily of modern commercial grapes, show how grapes thrived in the evolving neotropical rainforests after the Cretaceous extinction.
📖 Read the full story on Michigan News, also featured in LSA Magazine.
